SANTA’S BUSY SCHEDULE
(A scientific enquiry into Santa Claus)
At this time, there is no known species of reindeer that 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 approximately 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 or 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 least one good child in each house.)
Santa has 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the different time zones and the rotation of the earth (assuming he travels from east to west which seems logical). This works out to 822.6 visits per second. That 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 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 between each household. So.... in this small time frame of 31 hours, Santa must travel over 70 million miles, not counting stops to do what most of us MUST do at least once every 31 hours, plus feeding, etc.
In order to meet this deadline, Santa’s sleigh must move at 650 miles per second, 3000 times the speed of sound. For purposes of comparison, the Ulysses space probe moves at a poky 27.4 miles per second. For your information, a conventional reindeer can run, tops, 15 miles per hour.
The payload on the sleigh adds another interesting element. Let’s first assume that each child gets nothing more than a medium-sized LEGO set. If each LEGO set weighs about 2 pounds the sleigh is carrying 321,300 tons (not counting Santa who is invariably described as overweight). On land, a conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. Even granting that “flying reindeer” could pull TEN TIMES the normal amount, we cannot do the job with eight, or even nine. We would require 214,200 reindeer to pull the job off. This increases the overall payload (not counting the weight of the sleigh) to 353,430 tons. Again, for comparison, the payload is four times the weight of the Queen Elizabeth cruise ship. Imagine, if you will, what this weight would do to an average sized single-family house as Santa makes a landing.
Ready for the real nitty-gritty? This asteroid, full of Christmas joy, weighing in at 353,000 tons (plus or minus a few tons) is traveling at 650 miles per second. This mass traveling at this speed creates enormous air resistance and will heat up the reindeer in the same fashion as a spacecraft re-entering the earth’s atmosphere. Since the lead reindeer are not adorned with specially designed, NASA approved, heat dissipating ceramic tile, they will absorb 14.3 QUINTILLION joules of energy per second (each). In short, they will burst into flame almost instantaneously, exposing the next pair of reindeer behind them. This process will continue and create deafening sonic booms in the 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 causing a stunning visual effect similar to that of a fat June bug hitting a windshield at 60 MPH.
So in conclusion, boys and girls, if Santa ever tried to deliver presents on Christmas Eve, he’s now defunct!