Scientific Research into Santa Claus

As a result of an overwhelming lack of requests, we are pleased to present the annual scientific research into Santa Claus and his once a year sleigh ride.

Assumption: There are 2 billion children in the world. Due to religious affiliations, Santa only stops at approximately 15% of them - 378 million, according to the Census. At an average rate of 3.5 children per household, that's 91.8 million homes.

1. Santa has 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to different time zones and the rotation of the earth. This works out to 822.6 visits per second or 1/100th of a second per visit.

2. Assuming that each of these 91.8 million stops are distributed evenly around the earth, we are talking .78 miles per household, a total trip of 75-1/2 million miles. That means Santa's sleigh is moving 650 miles per second, 3000 times the speed of sound. For purposes of comparison, the fastest man-made vehicle on earth, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a pokey 27.4 miles per second - a conventional reindeer can run (tops) 15 mph.

3. The payload on the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming that each child gets nothing more than a medium sized Lego set (2 pounds), the sleigh is carrying 321,300 tons, not counting Santa, who is invariably described as overweight. On land, reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. Even granting that "flying reindeer" can pull 10 TIMES the normal amount, we cannot do the job with eight or nine. We need 214,200 reindeer. This increases the payload, not even counting the weight of the sleigh, to 353,430 tons.

4. 353,000 plus tons traveling 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance - this will heat the reindeer up in the same fashion as spacecraft re-entering the earth's atmosphere. The lead pair of reindeer will absorb 14.3 QUINTILLION joules of energy per second, each. In short, they will burst into flame almost instantaneously, exposing the reindeer behind them, and create deafening sonic booms in their wake. The entire reindeer team will be vaporized within 4.26 thousandths of a second. Santa, meanwhile, will be subjected to centrifugal 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 4,315,015 pounds of force.

Conclusion:
The holidays are a time of magic and wonder