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Children all over the world believe in the ho-ho-hoing Santa Claus and his flying reindeer. They are excitedly waiting for his presents every Christmas. But they always fall asleep even before the heavily bearded, pot-bellied guy jumps down the chimney. And when they wake up next morning, they will dash to check their Christmas presents. Their parents will only smile. That’s because there’s no Santa. Basic laws in physics say so. It’s not possible, theoretically and practically speaking.

Time

The world has about 2 billion children (defined as persons under the age of 18). However, since Santa doesn’t seemingly visit the Muslim, Buddhist, Jewish, and Hindu kids, his workload is reduced to 15% of the total child population - around 380 million as reported by the Population Reference Bureau. Since there are 3.5 children every household, Santa has to visit 91.8 million homes (considering that each home has at least one good kid).

Assuming that Santa travels from east to west, he has to work 31 hours of Christmas - thanks to earth’s rotation and the different time zones. This means that Santa visits 822.6 homes every second. For each household, Santa has 0.001 second to park his sleigh, hop out, squeeze his overweight body down the chimney, fill the socks, distribute other presents under the Christmas tree, feast on whatever foods have been left, figure how to get out, get back into his sleigh and visit the next stop.

Distance

Supposing that the 91.8 million homes Santa visits every Christmas are evenly distributed around the world, he has to travel 0.78 miles every stop, or an overall trip of about 71.604 million miles. This excludes stops to do what people usually do every 31 hours, including eating, taking a leak, etc.

Speed

Given the time and distance, Santa’s sleigh should move at 650 mps, which is 3,000 times faster than the speed of sound. To picture this tremendous speed, the Ulysses space probe (the fastest vehicle on earth) moves at around 27.4 mps. A reindeer can run for 15 mph tops.

Weight

Let’s assume that each good Christian child receives presents weighing not more than 2 pounds. This means that Santa’s sleigh carries about 321,300 tons of Christmas presents. This does not include the guy who is forever described as overweight. On land, a reindeer is capable of pulling things not heavier than 300 pounds. Thus, Santa needs 214,200 reindeer. This further increases the payload to about 353,430 tons, excluding the weight of Santa’s sleigh. For comparison, the payload is four times heavier the weight of RMS Queen Elizabeth.

Air resistance

353,400 tons moving at 650 mps creates tremendous air resistance, heat up the reindeer in the same way a spacecraft is heated up when it re-enters the earth’s atmosphere. Given the weight and speed, the front pair of reindeer each absorb around 14.3 quintillion joules of energy per second. In short, Santa’s entire reindeer entourage will evaporate in just 4.26 thousandths of a second.

Centrifugal force

Meanwhile, Santa is subject to centrifugal forces that are 17,500.06 times stronger than the gravitational force. Assuming that Santa weighs 250 pounds, the poor guy would be nailed to the back of the sleigh by about 4.3 million pounds of force.

Using these basic principles of physics, it can be concluded that Santa is dead now, if he ever delivered Christmas presents. But be warned, parents. You tell your kids that Santa doesn’t exist and you spoil their childhood big time.

 

© Sciencetips 2008