Santa Claus: An Engineer's Perspective
There are approximately two billion children (persons under 10) in the
world. However, since Santa does not visit children of Muslim, Hindu,
Jewish or Buddhist (except maybe in Japan) religions, this reduces the
workload for Christmas night to 15% of the total, or 378 million
(according to the Population Reference Bureau). At an average (census)
rate of 3.5 children per household, that comes to 108 million homes,
presuming that there is at least one good child in each.
Santa has about 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 967.7
visits per second. This is to say that for each Christian household
with a good child, Santa has around 1/1000th of a second to park the
sleigh, hop out, jump down the chimney, fill the stockings, distribute
the remaining presents under the tree, eat whatever snacks have been
left for him, get back up the chimney, jump into the sleigh and get on
to the next house.
Assuming that each of these 108 million stops is evenly distributed
around the earth (which, of course, we know to be false, but will
accept for the purposes of our calculations), we are now talking about
0.78 miles per household; a total trip of 75.5 million miles, not
counting bathroom stops or breaks. This means 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, the Ulysses
space probe, moves at a poky 27.4 miles per second, and a conventional
reindeer can run (at best) 15 miles per hour. The payload of 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 over 500 thousand tons, not counting Santa himself. On land,
a conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. Even
granting that the "flying" reindeer could pull ten times the normal
amount, the job can't be done with eight or even nine of them-Santa
would need 360,000 of them. This increases the payload, not counting
the weight of the sleigh, another 54,000 tons, or roughly seven times
the weight of the Queen Elizabeth (the ship, not the monarch). 600,000
tons traveling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air
resistance - this would heat up the reindeer in the same fashion as a
spacecraft re-entering the earth's atmosphere. The lead pair of
reindeer would absorb 14.3 quintillion joules of energy per second
each. In short, they would burst into flames almost instantaneously,
exposing the reindeer behind them and creating deafening sonic booms
in their wake. The entire reindeer team would be vaporized within 4.26
thousandths of a second, or right about the time Santa reached the
fifth house on his trip.
Not that it matters, however, since Santa - as a result of accelerating
from a dead stop to 650 m. p. s. in . 001 seconds - would be subjected to
acceleration forces of 17,500 g's. A 250 pound Santa (which seems
ludicrously slim) would be pinned to the back of the sleigh by
4,315,015 pounds of force, instantly crushing his bones and organs and
reducing him to a quivering puddle of pink goo.
Therefore, if Santa did exist, he's dead now.
Merry Christmas!
There are approximately two billion children (persons under 10) in the
world. However, since Santa does not visit children of Muslim, Hindu,
Jewish or Buddhist (except maybe in Japan) religions, this reduces the
workload for Christmas night to 15% of the total, or 378 million
(according to the Population Reference Bureau). At an average (census)
rate of 3.5 children per household, that comes to 108 million homes,
presuming that there is at least one good child in each.
Santa has about 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 967.7
visits per second. This is to say that for each Christian household
with a good child, Santa has around 1/1000th of a second to park the
sleigh, hop out, jump down the chimney, fill the stockings, distribute
the remaining presents under the tree, eat whatever snacks have been
left for him, get back up the chimney, jump into the sleigh and get on
to the next house.
Assuming that each of these 108 million stops is evenly distributed
around the earth (which, of course, we know to be false, but will
accept for the purposes of our calculations), we are now talking about
0.78 miles per household; a total trip of 75.5 million miles, not
counting bathroom stops or breaks. This means 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, the Ulysses
space probe, moves at a poky 27.4 miles per second, and a conventional
reindeer can run (at best) 15 miles per hour. The payload of 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 over 500 thousand tons, not counting Santa himself. On land,
a conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. Even
granting that the "flying" reindeer could pull ten times the normal
amount, the job can't be done with eight or even nine of them-Santa
would need 360,000 of them. This increases the payload, not counting
the weight of the sleigh, another 54,000 tons, or roughly seven times
the weight of the Queen Elizabeth (the ship, not the monarch). 600,000
tons traveling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air
resistance - this would heat up the reindeer in the same fashion as a
spacecraft re-entering the earth's atmosphere. The lead pair of
reindeer would absorb 14.3 quintillion joules of energy per second
each. In short, they would burst into flames almost instantaneously,
exposing the reindeer behind them and creating deafening sonic booms
in their wake. The entire reindeer team would be vaporized within 4.26
thousandths of a second, or right about the time Santa reached the
fifth house on his trip.
Not that it matters, however, since Santa - as a result of accelerating
from a dead stop to 650 m. p. s. in . 001 seconds - would be subjected to
acceleration forces of 17,500 g's. A 250 pound Santa (which seems
ludicrously slim) would be pinned to the back of the sleigh by
4,315,015 pounds of force, instantly crushing his bones and organs and
reducing him to a quivering puddle of pink goo.
Therefore, if Santa did exist, he's dead now.
Merry Christmas!
