The Physics of Santa Claus
The Earth and PeopleEarth: The earth\'s surface is roughly 510 Million square miles. Of this surface area, approximately 70.8% is covered by either oceans, lakes, rivers or streams. To make things simpler, let\'s assume that the world\'s population is evenly distributed across the remaining 148.9 million square miles of dry land.
People: Given that the planet\'s estimated total population in 2000 is at or near 6.23 Billion persons, that\'s roughly 41.8 persons per square mile of dry land. According to the latest US census data, roughly 22% of the nation\'s population is under the age of 15 years. Using this as a proxy for the remainder of the world, we surmise that there are roughly 9.2 persons under the age of 15 among the 41.8 persons per square mile of dry land – which summarily implies that Santa may be reasonably expected to deliver somewhere in the neighborhood of 1,370,600,000 (1.37 Billion) presents.
Starts, Stops and Speeds Starts and Stops: Pertaining to the number of starts and stops that Santa would have to make, we must look toward the number of individual households. In the 1990\'s, census data from the United States, as well as other industrialized countries such as Germany, were analyzed and it was found that the average household size in industrialized countries was in the neighborhood of 3.2 persons per household – a conservative estimate by any measure.
Taking the 3.2 persons per household assumption into the 41.8 total population per square mile, implies that Santa would need to make, on average, 13.1 stops per square mile.
To simplify, assume that Santa, via use his magical powers, can instantly set up the tree, decorate the house, eat the cookies and layout the presents (Santa spends zero time in any household.) For further simplicity, assume the world is flat – just for the moment. Since the square root of 13.1 is 3.6, we can assume that (on average) Santa\'s stops are approximately 3.6 miles from each other.
Speeds: In order to make the trip from rooftop to rooftop, Santa must travel 7,038,628,036 linear miles. Within a 24 hour time period, this equates to roughly 293,276,168 (293.3 Million) miles per hour – approximately 81,466 miles per second or Mach 385,890.
This poses somewhat of a safety concern, particularly for children sleeping near windows or not in bomb shelters as the resulting shock wave from Santa\'s passing sleigh (as he leapt to the neighbor\'s house) would certainly obliterate the home from which Santa had most recently departed. The cumulative effect of the resulting sonic booms would level cities, flatten mountains and generally make a complete mess of things.
Weight and Friction Presents: Recall that Santa is reasonably expected to deliver some 1.37 Billion presents each year. At a meager ½ pound each, that\'s only 685.3 million pounds of gifts.
Reindeer: It\'s been posited that Santa\'s sleigh is pulled by reindeer. Assuming each reindeer can pull twice it\'s maximum weight of 700 pounds (Santa\'s sleigh is considered weightless), roughly 489,500 full grown reindeer would be required to nudge the sleigh off of the ground.
Friction: At speeds in excess of Mach 300,000; the lead pair of reindeer would be exposed to enormous air friction. Specifically, the amount of friction force applied to the lead team as computed by the friction coefficient (conservatively estimated at roughly 0.04) times the normal force (normally the weight of the object) or 0.04 * 700 pounds. At such speed as Santa\'s sleigh must travel; 7,832 of the lead reindeer would be instantly incinerated upon take off of the sleigh. Assuming Santa\'s reindeer run or fly two abreast, are sequentially exposed to the air friction and are able to withstand the tremendous friction temperatures for one second; Santa would require no less than 172,800 additional replacement reindeer for the lead team – bringing the total number of reindeer to 662,300.
Weight: The combined weight of presents and reindeer (recall that the sleigh is considered to be weightless) comes to a whopping 574,455 Tons – equivalent to the weight of ten fully-loaded, battle-ready Iowa class battleships.
Bottom Line The sight of Santa\'s approaching, massive sleigh, coupled with it\'s full complement of flaming reindeer would significantly get your attention almost immediately. This would need to be the case, since you would have roughly 1/3500th of a second before the sleigh (after coming into visible range) would follow the simplest laws of physics.
The Crush. Having the equivalent of 10 of the largest US Battleships ever developed dropped from a cruising altitude of over 3 miles (the lowest full-speed altitude attainable by the United States\' Mach 3 SR-71 "Black-Bird") at a speed of 32 feet per second per second would be roughly equivalent to having a "small" asteroid collide with a ping-pong ball. Since the object in question (namely Santa\'s sleigh) is under it\'s own propulsion power (namely, the flaming reindeer) to the tune of Mach 300,000+, the resulting impact would simply plow through any hardened bunker or mountain known to exist as well as cracking the earth\'s crust.
The Noise and Heat. The resulting simultaneous sonic booms associated with Santa\'s arrival in your neighborhood would level all standing buildings within a 285,000 mile radius without a trace. The immense heat produced by the instantaneous release of energy and friction as well as the resulting atmospheric shock waves would produce such heat that all matter as we know it would be broken down into it\'s most basic elemental forms at the molecular level (within a 43 mile radius, would consist of 13% pure silicon, 68% carbon and roughly 19% inert matter.) Outside of this radius, for an additional 5,470 miles fire, hurricane force winds, subsequent shockwaves and tremendous heat would stifle all known forms of life.
REBUTTAL:[/size]
The author of the original article completely overlooks wormholes. Everyone knows that one pole of the earth\'s magnetic field is near the North Pole. And everyone knows that Santa Claus lives at the North Pole. Although the correspondence between lines of magnetic force and wormholes has not been widely examined in the literature, one conclusion of the theory of
ribbons and bows is that the two are frequently found co-existing. I have written a paper on this and sent it to Stephen Hawking for comment, but so far, he has not responded.
Assuming my theory is correct, then Santa, in each of his quantum states can enter any number of the infinite number of wormholes near his house simultaneously, and can make the trip at a leasurely pace, since in effect, he is only making ONE delivery multiplied X number of times as the number of good children dictate. Obviously once the problem is reduced to a single trip, the solution is trivial, and it is intuitively obvious that Santa can fly his Reindeer at normal FAA speed and height recommendations.
Clearly, this is basic physics, and I do not understand why the original author has any difficulty at all solving this problem.
happy festivus. :banana:
