C
Carl Sundquist
Guest
Scientific inquiry into the issue of Santa Claus.
1. No known species of reindeer can fly. But there are an estimated 300,000 species of living
organisms yet to be classified, and while most of these are insects and bacteria, this does
not completely rule out flying reindeer which only Santa claims to have seen.
2. There are 2 billion children (persons under 18) in the world. But since Santa doesn't (appear)
to service Muslim, Hindu, Jewish and Buddhist children, that reduces the workload to 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. We will presume that there is
at least one good child in each home.
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, for each Christian household with good children,
Santa has 1/823rd of a second to park, hop out of the sleigh, jump down the chimney, fill the
stockings, distribute the 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 will accept), we are talking about
.78 miles per household, making a total trip of 75.5 million miles, not counting stops to do
what most of us must do at least once every 31 hours, plus feeding the animals, 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 ever made, the Ulysses
spacecraft, moves at a paltry 27.4 miles per second, whereas a conventional reindeer can run, at
maximum, 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 each. 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 would,
rather, need 214,200 reindeer. This increases the payload‹not even counting the weight
of the sleigh‹to 353,430 tons. By comparison, this is four times the weight of the Queen
Elizabeth.
5. A total of 353,000 tons traveling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance,
which will heat the reindeer up in the same fashion as a spacecraft re-entering 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 creating deafening sonic booms in their wake. The entire reindeer
team will be vaporized within 4.26 one-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.
1. No known species of reindeer can fly. But there are an estimated 300,000 species of living
organisms yet to be classified, and while most of these are insects and bacteria, this does
not completely rule out flying reindeer which only Santa claims to have seen.
2. There are 2 billion children (persons under 18) in the world. But since Santa doesn't (appear)
to service Muslim, Hindu, Jewish and Buddhist children, that reduces the workload to 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. We will presume that there is
at least one good child in each home.
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, for each Christian household with good children,
Santa has 1/823rd of a second to park, hop out of the sleigh, jump down the chimney, fill the
stockings, distribute the 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 will accept), we are talking about
.78 miles per household, making a total trip of 75.5 million miles, not counting stops to do
what most of us must do at least once every 31 hours, plus feeding the animals, 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 ever made, the Ulysses
spacecraft, moves at a paltry 27.4 miles per second, whereas a conventional reindeer can run, at
maximum, 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 each. 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 would,
rather, need 214,200 reindeer. This increases the payload‹not even counting the weight
of the sleigh‹to 353,430 tons. By comparison, this is four times the weight of the Queen
Elizabeth.
5. A total of 353,000 tons traveling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance,
which will heat the reindeer up in the same fashion as a spacecraft re-entering 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 creating deafening sonic booms in their wake. The entire reindeer
team will be vaporized within 4.26 one-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.
