Santa Claus:An Engineers Perspective

[Verfall]

*borrowed from a Fark comments section*

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 (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.

Therefore, if Santa did exist, he's dead now.

[captainspud]

Alright folks, we can start dismantling the Internet-- it has officially been "won", and serves no further purpose from this day forth.

[Lunarman]

You mean he's not real?

[The Phantom Eyebrow]

But... but... Santa's sleigh is run by magic!

MAGIC! 

[Adamence]

I won't stop believing in Santa until the Mythbusters say otherwise. 

[Cardmaster]

I prefer to think of Santa as a Class V Time/Space manipulator.

He slows down time and then bends space to get from house to house even faster, occasionally teleporting back to the North Pole for a toy refill.

^_^

-CM

[Podmark]

This is the greatest thread ever! Thank you Verfall.

[bat1987]

He`s not real? Pfft, now your gonna tell me that Easter Bunny and Tooth Fairy don`t exist as well!

Yeah, right.

[Outcast]

But... but... Santa's sleigh is run by magic!

MAGIC! 

No argument here.  ^_^

[DMenacer]

Santa also has a magical never ending bag of toys, all he does is fill it with one of each item and he never runs out of that item. All he has to do is reach in and pull out what he needs and the next time he reaches in another of that same item will be there.

[stumpy]

I agree with Cardmaster, Santa is like Hiro on Heroes, bending space and time to accommodate his delivery schedule. Also, the elf toymakers are actually nanofabrication units, creating toys out of atmospheric dust scooped in at the front of the sleigh as they travel, reducing the headwind and necessary payload capacity.

BTW, a reindeer can only run at 15 miles per hour? What kind of lazy reindeer is Santa breeding? A bear can do 30 MPH, so I'd be a little surprised if reindeer weren't in the same class. Animals without a great defensive ability tend to be at least as fast as the animals that eat them...

[Conduit]

Yeah, the top speed figure for a reindeer is definitely wrong.  According to wikipedia, North American reindeer can run at speeds of up to 50 miles per hour.

[Valandar]

Didn't you know? Jamie Madrox went back in time and became immortal (and fat), and owns several hundred thousand mutant reindeer with the ability to slow down time.

He just has the elves beat him up a bit (to take out their frustrations for working 364 out of 365 days a year), and sends about 100,000 duplicate Santas in sleighs that have the stealth technology from the Blackbird, giving each "santa" only about a thousand homes to visit. :D

[YoungHeros]

I think he is like Agent Smith, you know with make the power to make copies of himself :cool:

[Conduit]

I think he is like Agent Smith, you know with make the power to make copies of himself :cool:

Only without stealing other people's bodies, because Santa would never do that.  :P

[Midnight]

I think he is like Agent Smith, you know with make the power to make copies of himself :cool:

Only without stealing other people's bodies, because Santa would never do that.  :P

Yes. Of course he wouldn't.

[YoungHeros]

Exactly ;)

[Uncle Yuan]

At least the tremendous speeds he needs to use to travel would help keep him from getting blown out of the air like in that other thread . . .

[vamp]

Gosh people, watch a friggin movie, you know they never lie :P

If you've seen Polar Express you notice that it is "5 to midnight" almost the entire movie, leaving me to believe that he indeed does control time.

You naughty Verfall, you are getting a lump of coal for christmas :P. Unless you sit on Santa's lap :blink:

[Figure Fan]

L O L @ this thread.

Now, for my evil plan--

Subject every child to the atrocities of this page and forever scar them! Muhahahahah!


What? :unsure:

[DMenacer]

Why Santa might be a few minutes late tonight.

http://img153.imageshack.us/img153/183/santawa7.gif

[BWPS]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_Force

Mr. Engineer has not taken into account all the facts!