Santa, A physicist's Perspective Warning not for under 16's...

nesf

If you are 16 or under, you were warned, so don't try to sue me for breaking the bad news...

A seasonal analysis....
Santa Claus: An physicsists perspective ...
I. There are approximately two billion children (persons under 18) in the world. However, since Santa does not visit children of Muslim, Hindu, Jewish or Buddhist 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 house hold, that comes to 108 million homes, presuming that there is at least one good child in each.
II. 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.
III. The payload of the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming that each child gets nothing more than a medium sized Lego set (weighing 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).
IV. 600,000 tons traveling at 650 miles per second crates 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 centrifugal 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 blob of pink goo.
V. Therefore, if Santa did exist, he's dead now. Sorry....

Dave

Everyone knows he uses magic

I bet you feel silly now.

-Dave

Wolf

All i can say is that i have worked with kids and that chances are that there are only around 10,000 good kids in the world and this means that the distance to travel, the devilery time, the devilery loads etc are greatly reduced and therefore would make the journey quite possible due to santas magical properties.

[This message has been edited by [-UK-]Wolf (edited 01-09-2001).]

Bob the Unlucky Octopus

That's a good 'un nesf- saw that myself on the Matrix Humor web archive a while back. Also check out the Cartoon Laws of Physics- good laugh if you did physics in high school/college.

The other problem that the thought experiment fails to address is the fact that his destinations aren't in a straight line- even as an approximation he would probably need to approach 0.55c to have a chance. But by then, perhaps time dilation will have given him a chance...who knows? Certainly not me

Bob the Unlucky Octopus

chernobyl

he uses magic.
jesus, that report never mentioned the **magic**

---

Ashley Lyn

Ashley Lyn Cafagna

Manach

Tsk, tsk, tsk.
This can easily be explained by another science, Biology.
Simply put, cloning. Do you honestly think all those Santa's we see on the streets are not the real article. They are Santa(s) in disguse checking the nice/naughter people.

Also, dare I mention the word Genetic Modification. C'mon, did you really think red noses that glow are natural in reindeer?

Superman

mann we all know he uses magic,
>
Timezones + The Sandman
>
(rumour has it he's in cahoots with the tooth fairy)
>
look he exists and probably doesn't deliver all the presents i say he dropships alot of fake pokemon from china to africa. they can't tell the difference.

Bob the Unlucky Octopus

How did this thread get locked you ask?

Magic, obviously.