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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 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 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 onto 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 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 pokey 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 flying reindeer can pull 10 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).
A mass of nearly 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 reaches 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 17,000 g's. A 250 pound Santa (which seems
ludicrously slim considering all the high calorie snacks he must have
consumed over the years) 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 blob of pink goo. Therefore, if Santa did exist,
he's dead now.
MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!
: party ha
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 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 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 onto 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 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 pokey 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 flying reindeer can pull 10 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).
A mass of nearly 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 reaches 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 17,000 g's. A 250 pound Santa (which seems
ludicrously slim considering all the high calorie snacks he must have
consumed over the years) 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 blob of pink goo. Therefore, if Santa did exist,
he's dead now.
MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!
: party ha
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