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Christmas Collection

There is no Santa Claus, mathematically speaking...

Why, you ask?

Well for starters, there is no known species of flying reindeer. Nevertheless, there are some 300,000 species of living organism yet to be classified, and while most of these are insects and germs, it cannot be completely ruled out that flying reindeer aren't amongst them. However, it is very curious that only Santa has seen reindeer fly...

Now, let's dig into the mathematical equation. There are approximately 2 billion children (persons under 18) in the world. But, since Santa doesn't appear to deliver to the Muslim, Hindu, Jewish or Buddhist children, that reduces the workload to 15% of the total, or some 378 Million children. At an average of 3.5 children per household, that's 91.8 Million homes, if there is at least ONE good child in each.

Santa has 31 hours of Christmas to work in, thanks to the different time zones and the Earth's rotation, assuming he travels East to West, which would be logical. This works out to some 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 gifts, eat whatever snacks are left for him, get back up the chimney, get back in to the sleigh and move to the next house.

If we assume that each of these 91.8 Million households are evenly distributed around the globe, (which we know is false, but for the purpose of our calculations we will keep), we are talking about 0.78 miles per household, a total trip of 75.5 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, or 3,000 times the speed of sound. For comparison, the fastest man made vehicle, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a poky 27.4 miles per second, while a conventional reindeer can run at, tops, 15 miles per hour.

The payload of the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming that each child gets nothing more that a medium sized Lego set, (two lbs.), the sleigh is carrying 321,000 Tons, not counting Santa, who is invariably described as rather plump and overweight. On land, conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 lbs. Even granting that "flying reindeer" could pull ten times that amount, Santa would need a lot more reindeer than the eight he is supposed to have. It would require 214,200 reindeer to do the job. This increases the payload, not counting the weight of the sleigh, to 353,430 Tons. For comparison, this is roughly three times the weight of the Titanic.

353,430 Tons traveling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance, which will heat up the lead reindeer in much the same fashion as a spacecraft reentering earth's atmosphere. The lead pair of reindeer will absorb an estimated 14.3 QUINTILLION Jules of energy. Per second. Each. This means that they would vaporize almost instantaneously, bursting into flames, exposing the reindeer behind them and creating a deafening sonic boom in their wake.

In conclusion, the entire reindeer team will be vaporized within 4.26/1000th of a second. Santa, meanwhile, would be subject to acceleration 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 4,316,015 pounds of force.

Therefore, if Santa ever did deliver presents on Christmas Eve, he is dead now...

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