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.