>THE PHYSICS OF SANTA AND HIS REINDEER
>
>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.
>
>There are two billion children (persons under 18)
>in the world. BUT since Santa doesn't appear to
>handle the Muslim, Hindu, Jewish 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.
>
>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? 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.
>
>The payload on the sleigh adds another
>interesting element. Assuming that each child
>gets nothing more than a medium-sized lego set
>(two 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 above) 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 Queen Elizabeth. 353,000 tons
>traveling at 650 miles per second creates
>enormous air resistance - this will heat the
>reindeer up in the same fashion as spacecraft re-
>entering 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 centrifugal
>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.
>
>In conclusion: If Santa ever DID deliver presents
>on Christmas Eve, he's dead now.
merry christmas.
god's many blessings.
