This is an example of
physics majors with way too much time on their hands...
1) No known species of
reindeer can fly. BUT there are 300,000 species of living organisms yet to
be classified, and while most of these are insects and germs, this does not
COMPLETELY rule out flying reindeer which only Santa has ever seen.
2) There are 2 billion
children (persons under 18) in the world. BUT since Santa doesn't (appear)
to handle most Muslim, Hindu, and Buddhist children, that reduces the
workload to 15% of the total - 378 million according to Population Reference
Bureau. At an average (census) rate of 3.5 children per household, that's
91.8 million homes. One presumes there's at least one good child in each.
3) Santa has 31 hours of
Christmas to work with, thanks to the different time zones and the rotation
of the earth, assuming he travels east to west (which seems logical). This
works out to 822.6 visits per second. This is to say that for each Christian
household with good children, Santa has 1/1000th of a second to park, hop
out of the sleigh, jump down the chimney, fill the stockings, distribute the
remaining presents under the tree, eat whatever snacks have been left, get
back up the chimney, get back into the sleigh and move on to the next house.
Assuming that each of
these 91.8 million stops are evenly distributed around the earth (which, of
course, we know to be false but for the purposes of our calculations we will
accept), we are now talking about .78 miles per household, a total trip of
75-1/2 million miles, not counting stops to do what most of us must do at
least once every 31 hours, plus feeding and etc.
This means that Santa's
sleigh is moving at 650 miles per second, 3,000 times the speed of sound.
For purposes of comparison, the fastest man- made vehicle on earth, the
Ulysses space probe, moves at a poky 27.4 miles per second - a conventional
reindeer can run, tops, 15 miles per hour.
4) The payload on the
sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming that each child gets
nothing more than a medium-sized lego set (2 pounds), the sleigh is carrying
321,300 tons, not counting Santa, who is invariably described as overweight.
On land, conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. Even
granting that "flying reindeer" (see point #1) could pull TEN TIMES the
normal amount, we cannot do the job with eight, or even nine. We need
214,200 reindeer. This increases the payload - not even counting the weight
of the sleigh - to 353,430 tons. Again, for comparison, this is four times
the weight of the cruise ship Queen Elizabeth II.
5) 353,000 tons traveling
at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance - this will heat the
reindeer up in the same fashion as a spacecraft reentering the earth's
atmosphere. The lead pair of reindeer will absorb 14.3 QUINTILLION joules of
energy. Per second. Each. In short, they will burst into flame almost
instantaneously, exposing the reindeer behind them, and create deafening
sonic booms in their wake. The entire reindeer team will be vaporized within
4.26 thousandths of a second. Santa, meanwhile, will be subjected to
acceleration forces 17,500.06 times greater than gravity. A 250-pound Santa
(which seems ludicrously slim) would be pinned to the back of his sleigh by
4,315,015 pounds of force.
Please do not tell your
kids about this as they will inevitably shoot holes in these calculations
and make a fool out of you.
