the physics of santa

smoke.me.a.kipper · 18-12-2001 3:59pm #1

got this in an e-mail. dont know if it's been here before....

The Physics of Santa Claus

1) Flying 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.

2) Children

There are 2 billion children (persons under 18) in the world. 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
rate of 3.5 children per household, that's 91.8 million homes, assuming there's at least
one good child in each.

3) Timing

Santa has 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the different time zones and the
rotation of the earth, assuming he logically travels east to west. This works out to
822.6 visits per second, so for each Christion 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, we know to be false, but for 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 assorted
pit stops for relief, feeding, etc. This means Santa's sleigh is moving at 650 miles per
second, 3,000 times the speed of sound. In comparison, the fastest man-made vehicle on
earth, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a poky 27.4 miles per second. A convential
reindeer can run, tops, 15 miles per hour.

4) Weight

Assuming that each child gets nothing more than a medium-sized Lego set (2 pounds), the
sleigh's payload is 321,300 tons, not counting Santa, who is invariably described as
overweight. on land, convential reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. Even granting
that "flying reindeer" (see above) could pull 10 times the normal amount, Santa would
need 214,000 reindeer. This increases the payload, not counting the weight of the sleigh,
to 353,430 tons.

5) Speed

353,000 tons traveling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance--this will
heat the reindeer up in the same fashion as spacecrafts 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 means ludicrously slim) would be pinned to the back of his sleigh by 4,315,015
pounds of force.

Conclusion...

If Santa ever DID deliver presents on Christmas Eve, he's dead now.

Foundations...

This inquiry is based on the premise that there is only one Santa Claus. The calculations
work out more realistically if you assume some form of parallel processing. A thousand
Santas (1 kilosanta) or a million (a megasanta) or more, working in parallel, could perform
the same number of visits in the same allotted time with less advanced technology (and
fewer vaporized reindeer).

One Other Point...

Who does the air traffic control for a megasanta? A million sleighs and 12 million
reindeer occupy a significant amount of airspace. If we assume that each reindeer team,
sleigh and Santa needs no more than 5 feet vertical airspace (which, given that known
species of reindeer with antlers are quite nearly five feet tall, leaves very little room
for error), then a megasanta requires almost 947 miles of vertical airspace. This also
disregards the fact that each Santa must make frequent landings. The airspace at chimney
level will be in high demand and disproportionately crowded, particularly as
Christmas-celebrating households tend to be densely clustered in the same geographic
areas. It seems likely that a megasanta, while perhaps avoiding vaporized reindeer, would
suffer huge casualties from in-air collisions.

From Patty Miranda, University of San Francisco Office of Admission
mirandap@usfca.edu
University of San Francisco Public Affairs.