Because it's Annual!
...and because god I love christmas.
There are approximately two billion children (persons under 18, as of 2005) in the
world. However, since Santa does not visit children of Muslim, Hindu,
Jewish or Buddhist (except maybe in Japan) religions, this reduces the
workload for Christmas night to 15% of the total, or 378 million
(according to the population reference bureau). At an average (census)
rate of 3.5 children per household that comes to 108 million homes
presuming there is at least one good child in each. Santa has about 31
hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the different time zones and
the rotation of the earth, assuming 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 around 1/1000 th of a second to park the sleigh, hop out, jump
down the chimney, fill the stocking, 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. Assuming
that each of these 108 million stops is evenly distributed around the
earth (which, of course, we know to be false, but will accept for the
purposes of our calculations), we are now talking about 0.78 miles per
household; a total trip of 75.5 million miles, not counting bathroom
stops or breaks.
This means Santa's sleigh is moving at 650 miles per second - 3,000
times the speed of sound. For purposes of comparison, the fastest man
made vehicle, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a poky 27.4 miles per
second, and a conventional reindeer can run at 15 miles per hour.
The payload of the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming
that each child gets nothing more than a medium sized LEGO set (two
pounds), the sleigh is carrying over 500 thousand tons, not counting
Santa himself.
On land, a conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. Even
granting that the "flying" reindeer can pull 10 times the normal amount,
the job can't be done with eight or even nine of them -Santa would need
360,000 of them. This increases the payload, not counting the weight of
the sleigh, another 54,000 tons, or roughly seven times the weight of
the Queen Elizabeth (the ship, not the 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 adsorb 14.3 quintillion joules of energy
per second each. 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 matters, however, since Santa, as a result of accelerating
from a dead stop to 650 m.p.s. in .001 seconds, would be subjected 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 and organs and reducing
him to a quivering blob of pink goo.
Therefore, if Santa did exist, he's dead now. Merry Christmas.
There are approximately two billion children (persons under 18, as of 2005) in the
world. However, since Santa does not visit children of Muslim, Hindu,
Jewish or Buddhist (except maybe in Japan) religions, this reduces the
workload for Christmas night to 15% of the total, or 378 million
(according to the population reference bureau). At an average (census)
rate of 3.5 children per household that comes to 108 million homes
presuming there is at least one good child in each. Santa has about 31
hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the different time zones and
the rotation of the earth, assuming 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 around 1/1000 th of a second to park the sleigh, hop out, jump
down the chimney, fill the stocking, 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. Assuming
that each of these 108 million stops is evenly distributed around the
earth (which, of course, we know to be false, but will accept for the
purposes of our calculations), we are now talking about 0.78 miles per
household; a total trip of 75.5 million miles, not counting bathroom
stops or breaks.
This means Santa's sleigh is moving at 650 miles per second - 3,000
times the speed of sound. For purposes of comparison, the fastest man
made vehicle, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a poky 27.4 miles per
second, and a conventional reindeer can run at 15 miles per hour.
The payload of the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming
that each child gets nothing more than a medium sized LEGO set (two
pounds), the sleigh is carrying over 500 thousand tons, not counting
Santa himself.
On land, a conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. Even
granting that the "flying" reindeer can pull 10 times the normal amount,
the job can't be done with eight or even nine of them -Santa would need
360,000 of them. This increases the payload, not counting the weight of
the sleigh, another 54,000 tons, or roughly seven times the weight of
the Queen Elizabeth (the ship, not the 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 adsorb 14.3 quintillion joules of energy
per second each. 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 matters, however, since Santa, as a result of accelerating
from a dead stop to 650 m.p.s. in .001 seconds, would be subjected 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 and organs and reducing
him to a quivering blob of pink goo.
Therefore, if Santa did exist, he's dead now. Merry Christmas.