Blknight.aus
11th December 2012, 06:59 PM
Let us assume that there are approximately two billion children (= persons under 18) in the world. However, since Santa does not visit children of Muslim, Hindu, Jewish, Shinto, Sun Worship, Scientology or Buddhist religions, this reduces his workload for Christmas night (24/25 Dec) to 15% or 378 million (Figures from the US Population Reference Bureau). At an average (see the last Census) rate of 3.5 children per household, and presuming that there is at least one good child in each house, that comes to 108 million homes.
Santa has about 31 hours of Christmas to work, thanks to the different time-zones, the rotation of the Earth, and assuming Santa will work 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 less than 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 onto the next house.
Let us assume that half of those 108 million (= 54 million) households leaves 1 x 20 gram biscuit (cream, chocolate or dry) and a 150ml cup of liquid for Santa to consume. Santa would be faced with consuming, carrying or disposing of 1.08 million kg/1,190 tons of biscuits and 8.1 million lt /475,509.7 (Imperial)gal of liquid that would weigh 8.1 million kg/2.14 million tons. Let us assume that Santa did drink some of that liquid. This would condemn him to at least 3 (as a conservative estimate) bathroom stops in that 31 hours. Assuming that Santa is quick (remember that he is wearing that thick warm layered(?) outfit) and that the required facilities are readily available and easily accessible, those three breaks would require 3 minutes from his 31 hours.
Assuming each of those 108 million stops are evenly distributed around the Earth, (which of course, we KNOW is not true, but will accept for the purposes of our calculations), we are now talking about 0.78 miles per household (not counting bathroom stops or breaks.) – a total trip of 785.5 million miles. This means that Santa’s sleigh is moving at 650 miles per second, or 3,000 times the speed of sound. For the purposes of comparison, a bullet travels at 823mr/sec (= 306 miles/hour), the fastest man-made vehicle, the Ulysses space probe, moves along at a pokey 27.4 miles per second, and a conventional reindeer can run (at best) at 15 miles/hour for short distances (when pursued by wolves – note plural).
The payload of the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming that each child receives nothing more than a medium-sized LEGO set weighing less than 1KG/2LB, the sleigh is carrying over 500,000 tons of freight (not counting Santa, himself, or any of that increasing load of biscuits and/or drinks).
On land, a conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. Assuming that a “flying” reindeer can pull 10-times what a normal reindeer can pull, the job can’t be done by eight or even nine of them – Santa would need 360,000 of them. This increases the payload, not counting the weight of the sleigh, biscuits or drinks, by another 54,000 tons, or roughly seven times the weight of the Queen Elizabeth II (the cruise ship, not the English Monarch).
600,000 tons travelling 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 each absorb 14.3 quintillion joules of energy per second. 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 vaporised within 4.26 thousandths of a second, or right about the time Santa reached the fifth house on his trip.
Not that it maters, because, as a result of accelerating from a dead stop to 650 miles per second in 0.001 seconds, Santa would be subject 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 4,315,015 pounds of force, instantly crushing his bones & organs, and reducing him to a quivering vertically-flat pool of pink goo on the seat back of the sleigh.
Therefore, if Santa did exist, he’s dead now. Merry Christmas.
Santa has about 31 hours of Christmas to work, thanks to the different time-zones, the rotation of the Earth, and assuming Santa will work 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 less than 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 onto the next house.
Let us assume that half of those 108 million (= 54 million) households leaves 1 x 20 gram biscuit (cream, chocolate or dry) and a 150ml cup of liquid for Santa to consume. Santa would be faced with consuming, carrying or disposing of 1.08 million kg/1,190 tons of biscuits and 8.1 million lt /475,509.7 (Imperial)gal of liquid that would weigh 8.1 million kg/2.14 million tons. Let us assume that Santa did drink some of that liquid. This would condemn him to at least 3 (as a conservative estimate) bathroom stops in that 31 hours. Assuming that Santa is quick (remember that he is wearing that thick warm layered(?) outfit) and that the required facilities are readily available and easily accessible, those three breaks would require 3 minutes from his 31 hours.
Assuming each of those 108 million stops are evenly distributed around the Earth, (which of course, we KNOW is not true, but will accept for the purposes of our calculations), we are now talking about 0.78 miles per household (not counting bathroom stops or breaks.) – a total trip of 785.5 million miles. This means that Santa’s sleigh is moving at 650 miles per second, or 3,000 times the speed of sound. For the purposes of comparison, a bullet travels at 823mr/sec (= 306 miles/hour), the fastest man-made vehicle, the Ulysses space probe, moves along at a pokey 27.4 miles per second, and a conventional reindeer can run (at best) at 15 miles/hour for short distances (when pursued by wolves – note plural).
The payload of the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming that each child receives nothing more than a medium-sized LEGO set weighing less than 1KG/2LB, the sleigh is carrying over 500,000 tons of freight (not counting Santa, himself, or any of that increasing load of biscuits and/or drinks).
On land, a conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. Assuming that a “flying” reindeer can pull 10-times what a normal reindeer can pull, the job can’t be done by eight or even nine of them – Santa would need 360,000 of them. This increases the payload, not counting the weight of the sleigh, biscuits or drinks, by another 54,000 tons, or roughly seven times the weight of the Queen Elizabeth II (the cruise ship, not the English Monarch).
600,000 tons travelling 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 each absorb 14.3 quintillion joules of energy per second. 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 vaporised within 4.26 thousandths of a second, or right about the time Santa reached the fifth house on his trip.
Not that it maters, because, as a result of accelerating from a dead stop to 650 miles per second in 0.001 seconds, Santa would be subject 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 4,315,015 pounds of force, instantly crushing his bones & organs, and reducing him to a quivering vertically-flat pool of pink goo on the seat back of the sleigh.
Therefore, if Santa did exist, he’s dead now. Merry Christmas.