Engineers Ruin Christmas
There are approximately two billion children (persons under 18) in the world. 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 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 stocking, 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 now talking about 0.78 miles per household -a total trip of 75.5 million miles, not counting bathroom stops or breaks (PF&D). 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.
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 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) which could not be supported by the average roof. 600,000 tons traveling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance that would heat up the reindeer in the same fashion as a spacecraft reentering 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 acceleration forces of 17,000 g’s. A 250 pound Santa (which seems ludicrously slim) would be pinned to the back of the sleigh by 4.3 million 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.
From my daddy, to you. Merry Christmas you guys!
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That’s why I choose to believe there many multiples of Santa. I believe Santa can multiply himself 108 million times, so each of him has only one delivery to make. At the end of the night Santa returns to his one former self.
LOL Love that theory
108 million is not higher number than actual number of kids who observe Christmas and those who believe that Santa is a distribution channel for presents. I think that 54 million (or even less) is a better number. Therefore Santa has more time to deliver presents.
Then we have the relativity. The faster Santa moves the time passes at slower rate. But he’s really heavy.
108 million IS higher …
LOL!
I hold to the theory that Santa is a Time Lord and visits each home sequentially at exactly the same time. By the clock anyway.
I heard it was the Doctor who helped Santa deliver all the presents to every house at exactly the same time
Could be. Could be. The Doctor does get around.
Modern technology has allowed Santa to clone both himself and the elves. He now has an unlimited supply of elf labor to go with his many selves. The elves have been hard at work constructing new sleighs of a lightweight polymer capable of carrying many more presents at much greater speeds than the old sleighs.
The reindeer of course, have been genetically bred for years. Santa and company now own several stables of reindeer located at at both poles and in various snow capped mountains throughout the world.
Cell phones, GPS, and numerous supply chains have turned Santa Inc. into one of the largest non-profit companies in the world. It’s become so big and efficient that they’re thinking of leasing the operation for other gift giving holidays like Valentine’s Day and rumor has it some of the Santa’s will son available for private birthday parties.
LOL I love how scientific and sure you sound
It’s a closely guarded secret that Santa (or as he is known in Austria, Schrödinger), uses a Quantum Mechanics to visit every child on the planet at the same time.
14.3 exajoules (please use science-y prefixes – commoners don’t even know what a quintillion is so why mix science-y units like joules with it?) is the equivalent of detonating 380 individual W53 9 MT warheads (the largest ever used by US DOD in the Titan missile). Also equivalent to detonating 34 Russian Tsar Bombs.
Clearly Santa is a nuclear threat and must be stopped at all costs. Advocating or supporting Santa is self-evidently an act of terrorism under the NDAA and any such individuals (including US citizens) can expect to be rounded up and held without charge indefinitely in Gitmo.