The Physics Of Santa

PHYSICS OF SAMTA There are 2 billion children in the world, 19% celebrate Christmas Leaving 380 million children (not strictly true but it helps with the numbers) Santa must visit. With an average census rate of 3.5 children per household that's 91.8 million homes, assuming at least one child has been good. Assuming Santa travels east to west he will have 31 hours to work with. This works out at 822.6 visits per second. This gives Santa just over 1/1000th of a second to hop out of his sleigh, jump down the chimney, fill the stockings, distribute the remaining presents under the tree, eat the snacks that are left, and return back to his sleigh before moving on. Now, assuming that each of these 91.8 million homes are evenly distributed around the planet there is approximately .78 miles 75 500000 miles between each house. Giving a total trip distance of 75.5 million miles This means Santa's sleigh needs to move at 650 miles per second 3000 timeS the speed of sound. A conventional reindeer has a max speed of 15mph. MAX SPEED 15 Assuming that each child gets nothing more than a small sized Lego set (2 lbs) the sleigh would be carrying 321,300 tons. Not including Santa, who is invariable described as portly. Now on land a conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300lbs, . but if by some miracle the flying ones can pull ten times the normal . amount we would still, need a lot more reindeer than Rudolph and his mates. We need 214.200, increasing the payload to 353,430 tons, not including the sleigh, that's over 7 times the weight of the titanic Now 353,430 tons traveling at 650 miles per second creates colossal air resistance – this would heat up the reindeer in much the same way spacecraft re-entering the earth's atmosphere. The lead pair, Rudolph and Dasher would absorb 14.3 quintillion joules of energy, per second. They would burst into flame instantly, exposing the reindeer behind them, and create deafening sonic booms in their wake. Within 4.26 thousandths of a second the entire reindeer team would be vaporised, while Santa would be subjected to acceleration forces 17,500,06 times greater than gravity. A 250lb Santa would be pinned to the back of his sleigh by 4,315,015 Ibs of force It's the equivalent of having 2000 fully grown giraffes sat on you. In short if Santa does exist, he can not possibly abide by our laws of Physics. Issues surrounding Santa's Movements in the UK Transport Letters to Santa Reindeer movement Data protection laws are very strict on what information you keep on people, for how long and what reasonable access they have to it. Santa could quite rightly argue that he'd need to retain the information after each December 25, in case of any gift-related lawsuits - but would putting someone on a 'naughty or nice list' raise problems under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act? To use reindeer, Santa might need to show he'd passed a training course for livestock transport. Rudolph and the rest would also need to have proper rest stops, which would be quite difficult on a time schedule as tight as one night. Going from the Arctic to the high temperatures experienced in supersonic flight (the sleigh must travel at an estimated 650 miles per second to complete its rounds) would certainly breach a European Directive or two. That's without considering the fact that to move deer in the first place you need to fill in a Standard Movement (AML24) document and all movements must be reported to the proper authorities, (in the UK this comes under the 2006 Animal Welfare Act). As for Rudolph, his red nose is obviously a symptom of infectious bovine rhinotracheitis (IBR) - a reportable disease. PolicyExpert Insurance powered by people