The Physics of Santa Claus Some thoughts on the question of Santa…

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.

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

The Physics of Santa Claus There are 2 billion children ( persons under 18 ) in the world.

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.

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.

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

The Physics of Santa Claus This works out to visits per second.

For each household with good children, Santa has ~1 millisecond to travel to, deliver presents to, and leave each household

Doing all of these starts and stops in milliseconds, means an average acceleration near one billion “G”s. If Santa weighs about 100 kg, this means that just starting and stopping his sleigh makes a force on Santa that’s the equivalent of stacking three Empire State Buildings on top of him……

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)

The Physics of Santa Claus Santa has to travel 12.1 million km (75.5 million miles) in 36 hours.

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.

The Physics of Santa Claus 3000 times the speed of sound! 1x the speed of sound creates a sonic boom

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.)

The Physics of Santa Claus A conventional reindeer can run, tops, 24 km (15 miles) per hour. What about flying reindeer?

There’s only one thing that’s ever gone as fast through the air as Santa would need to in order to deliver presents: meteors ! There’s one problem with meteors They tend to burn up in the atmosphere!

Santa is exposed to the air, in his open sleigh and all. Burning while flying is not good.

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

The Physics of Santa Claus Not counting Santa’s mass, who is invariably described as overweight. He consumes billions of calories in just one night with all of those milk and cookie treats

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.

The Physics of Santa Claus We need 214,200 reindeer.

The Physics of Santa Claus This increases the payload - not even counting the mass of the sleigh – 320,626,302 kg (353,430 tons).

The Physics of Santa Claus Again, for comparison - this is mass is like four times the mass of a large cruise ship.

The Physics of Santa Claus 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.

The Physics of Santa Claus The lead pair of reindeer will absorb 14.3 QUINTILLION joules of energy per SECOND, EACH!

It won’t be just Rudolf’s nose glowing red.

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.

The Physics of Santa Claus The entire reindeer team will be vaporized within 4.26 milliseconds.

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.

When one works out the numbers for Santa — moving as fast as he does, exposed to the air we get this Santa situation

The Physics of Santa Claus In conclusion - If Santa ever DID deliver presents on Christmas Eve, he's dead by now.

traditional Santa story kills Santa. The physics do not make sense

Special thanks to snopes.com and Spy magazine for the lols.

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.) He could be upgraded! Movies do this for you all the time. The wrapping paper problem