Jump to content

The physics behind Santa Clause

DaddyBoyAU

By DaddyBoyAU
in Political Smack Talk

Recommended Posts

DaddyBoyAU Experienced

DaddyBoyAU 130

Posted
Posted

Is There A Santa Claus?

Here is some holiday cheer for the left-brained folks among us. The census statistics are from 1990 but the intent behind the science is obvious.

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 the 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 lease 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. This assumes 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 onto the next house. Assuming each of these 91 million stops are evenly distributed around the Earth (which, of course, we know is false but for the purposes of our calculations we will accept), we are now talking about 0.78 miles per household, a total trip of 75-1/2 million miles, not counting stops to do what most of us do at least once every 31 hours, plus feeding the reindeer, etc.

This means that Santa's sleigh is moving at 650 miles per second or 3,000 times the speed of sound. For the purposes of comparison, the fastest man-made vehicle on Earth, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a pokey 27.4 miles per second while 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 (2 pounds), the sleigh is carrying 321,300 tons not counting Santa who is invariable described as overweight. On land, conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. 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 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 ocean liner.

353,000 tons traveling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance and 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 flames almost instantaneously, exposing the reindeer behind them, and create deafening sonic booms in their wake. The entire 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.

Well, Merry Christmas anyway ;)

Link to comment
Share on other sites




DKW 86 Founding Father

DKW 86 7,899

Posted
Posted

You @#$% people never heard of WARP Drive? @#$% they been using it for years on the Enterprise!

"Reindeer" is actually just an acronym for Di-Lithium Crystal, Matter-AniMatter Warp Drive system used on his StarShip that is disguised as a Sleigh so the uninformed will at least be able to inteface with Santech-Claus.

At Warp 8, performing repeated variations of the "Picard Manuever" preprogrammed into a Helmsman 2300.3 Computer, this present delivery gig is a piece of cake.

And I know some of you think I watch far too much Star Trek, but to you I say "Live Long, ES&D" ;)

Link to comment
Share on other sites
hccobb Community Regular

hccobb 0

Posted
Posted

Well if we're going to use Star-Trek references why don't we make this even easier. Santa just returns to his HQ at the North Pole between house visits via his matter transporter. All Rudolph really does is work the little slider thingies (ala Mr. Scott)

"North Pole, this is Santa, one to beam up."

B)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

Go to topic listing
×
×
  • Create New...