The Physics of Santa Claus

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The Physics of Santa Claus
Some thoughts on the question of Santa
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This is science. Why Santa?

• Santa is a wonderful problem for science to
  explore.
• He has known conditions that involve basic
  physical concepts like speed and mass.

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You probably thought about this one as a kid
Santas biggest problem is that he has a long
distance to travel, and not that long to do it.

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The Physics of Santa Claus
There are 2 billion children (persons under
18) in the world.
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The Physics of Santa Claus
Santa doesn't (appear) to handle the Muslim,
Hindu, Jewish and Buddhist children. (Not to
mention that one kid from Polar Express.)
That reduces the workload to 15 of the total.
378 million according to the Population
Reference Bureau.
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The Physics of Santa Claus
At an average census rate of 3.5 children per
household That's 91.8 million homes. We
assume there's at least one good child in each.
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The Physics of Santa Claus
Assuming he travels east to west, Santa has 36
hours to work with Different time zones and the
rotation of the earth add some extra time
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The Physics of Santa Claus
This works out to 822.6 visits per second.
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For each household with good children, Santa has
1 millisecond to travel to, deliver presents
to, and leave each household
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Doing all of these starts and stops in
milliseconds, means an average acceleration near
one billion Gs. If Santa weighs about 100 kg,
this means that just starting and stopping his
sleigh makes a force on Santa thats the
equivalent of stacking three Empire State
Buildings on top of him
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The Physics of Santa Claus
..assuming that each of his 91.8 million stops
are evenly distributed around the earth..
(we know to be false but for the purpose of our
calculations we will accept)
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The Physics of Santa Claus
Santa has to travel 12.1 million km
(75.5 million miles) in 36 hours.

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The Physics of Santa Claus
not counting bathroom stops plus
feeding.... This means that Santa's sleigh is
moving at 1046 km (650 miles)
per second.
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The Physics of Santa Claus
3000 times the speed of sound! 1x the speed of
sound creates a sonic boom
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The Physics of Santa Claus

• Perhaps a technology upgrade is necessary? Not
  even our fastest rocket can match that.
• (Ulysses space probe, moves at a pokey 44 km
  (27.4 miles) per second.)

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The Physics of Santa Claus
A conventional reindeer can run, tops, 24 km (15
miles) per hour. What about flying reindeer?
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Theres only one thing thats ever gone as fast
through the air as Santa would need to in order
to deliver presents meteors! Theres one
problem with meteors
They tend to burn up in the atmosphere!
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Santa is exposed to the air, in his open sleigh
and all. Burning while flying is not good.
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The Physics of Santa Claus
The payload on the sleigh adds another
interesting element. Assuming that each
child gets nothing more than a medium-sized Lego
set (907 g) the sleigh is carrying 291,478,456
kg
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The Physics of Santa Claus
Not counting Santas mass, who is invariably
described as overweight.
He consumes billions of calories in just one
night with all of those milk and cookie treats
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The Physics of Santa Claus
On land, conventional reindeer can pull
no more than 136 kg. We cannot do the job
with eight, or even nine reindeer.
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The Physics of Santa Claus
We need 214,200 reindeer.
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The Physics of Santa Claus
This increases the payload - not even
counting the mass of the sleigh 320,626,302 kg
(353,430 tons).
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The Physics of Santa Claus
Again, for comparison - this is mass is like
four times the mass of a large cruise ship.
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The Physics of Santa Claus
320236213 kg traveling at 1046 km per
second creates enormous air resistance - this
will heat the reindeer up in the same fashion as
spacecrafts re-entering the earth's
atmosphere.
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The Physics of Santa Claus
The lead pair of reindeer will absorb 14.3
QUINTILLION joules of energy per SECOND, EACH!
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It wont be just Rudolfs nose glowing red.
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The Physics of Santa Claus
In short, they will burst into flames
almost instantaneously, exposing the reindeer
behind them, and create a deafening sonic boom in
their wake.
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The Physics of Santa Claus
The entire reindeer team will be vaporized
within 4.26 milliseconds.
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The Physics of Santa Claus
Santa, meanwhile, will be subjected to
forces 17,500 times greater than gravity. A 113
kg Santa (which seems ludicrously slim) would be
pinned to the back of his sleigh by 19,194,142
Newtons of force.
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When one works out the numbers for Santa moving
as fast as he does, exposed to the air we get
this Santa situation
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The Physics of Santa Claus
In conclusion - If Santa ever DID deliver
presents on Christmas Eve, he's dead by now.
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traditional Santa story kills Santa. The physics
do not make sense
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Special thanks to snopes.com and Spy magazine for
the lols.
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He could be upgraded! Movies do this for you
all the time.
A heat shield might dissipate enough heat every
second to avoid burning up like meteors do.
Santa could also be a robot! (Or, at the very
least, a cyborg.)
The wrapping paper problem