I. There are approximately two billion children (persons under 18
years of age) 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, which 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 (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 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
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.
Did you take into account Einstein's Theory of Relativity? The faster you move, the slower time travels for you. Once you reach the speed of light, time has about stopped.
Your problem if you do not believe in him. I know that I have a present every year from Santa and so are the good chidren of the world.
I know for a fact there is a Santa Clause.He is typing on my keyboard.He gets to open all those bills at the end of the month,Figured it out yet?Ho Ho Ho
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