The Physics of Santa Claus

IS THERE A SANTA CLAUS?

As a result of an overwhelming lack of requests, and with research help
from that renown scientific journal SPY magazine (January, 1990) - I am
pleased to present the annual scientific inquiry into Santa Claus.

1. 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. There are 2 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.
   
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 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 75-1/2 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.
   
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. 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.
   
5. 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.

Stanley I. Sandler
Center for Molecular and Engineering Thermodynamics
Department of Chemical Engineering
University of Delaware, Newark, DE 19716 USA
Tel: 302-831-2945 FAX:302-831-4466