Astrophysicist Linda Harden of the University of Maryland, has an interesting series of calculations to determine how Santa Claus could delivery gifts to all children who behaved well during the whole year.
Here the physics of Santa Claus:
1.
No known species of reindeer can fly. BUT there are
300,000 species of living organisms yet to be classified, and while most of
these are insects and germs, this does not COMPLETELY rule out flying reindeer
which only Santa has ever seen.
2. There
are 2 billion children (persons under 18) in the world. BUT since Santa doesn't
(appear to) handle the Muslim, Hindu, Jewish and Buddhist children, that
reduces the workload to 15% of the total - 378 million according to Population
Reference Bureau. At an average (census) rate of 3.5 children per household,
that's 91.8 million homes. One presumes there's at least one good child in
each.
3. Santa
has 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 822.6 visits per second. This is to say that for
each Christian household with good children, Santa has 1/1000th of a second to
park, hop out of the sleigh, jump down the chimney, fill the stockings, distribute
the remaining presents under the tree, eat whatever snacks have been left, get
back up the chimney, get back into the sleigh and move on to the next house. Assuming
that each of these 91.8 million stops are evenly distributed around the earth
(which, of course, we know to be false but for the purposes of our calculations
we will accept), we are now talking about .78 miles per household, a total trip
of 75-1/2 million miles, not counting stops to do what most of us must do at
least once every 31 hours, plus feeding etc.
This means that 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
on earth, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a poky 27.4 miles per second - a
conventional reindeer can run, tops, 15 miles per hour.
4. The
payload on the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming that each
child gets nothing more than a medium-sized lego set (2 pounds), the sleigh is
carrying 321,300 tons, not counting Santa, who is invariably described as
overweight. On land, conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. Even
granting that "flying reindeer" (see point #1) could pull TEN TIMES
the normal anoint, we cannot do the job with eight, or even nine. We need 214,200
reindeer. This increases the payload - not even counting the weight of the
sleigh - to 353,430 tons. Again, for comparison - this is four times the weight
of the Queen Elizabeth.
5. 353,000 tons traveling at 650
miles per second creates enormous air resistance - this will heat the reindeer
up in the same fashion as spacecrafts re-entering the earth's atmosphere. The
lead pair of reindeer will absorb 14.3 QUINTILLION joules of energy. Per
second. Each. In short, they will burst into flame almost instantaneously,
exposing the reindeer behind them, and create deafening sonic booms in their
wake. The entire reindeer team will be vaporized within 4.26 thousandths of a
second. Santa, meanwhile, will be subjected to centrifugal forces 17,500.06
times greater than gravity. A 250-pound Santa (which seems ludicrously slim) would
be pinned to the back of his sleigh by 4,315,015 pounds of force.
In conclusion If Santa ever DID deliver presents on Christmas Eve, he's dead now.