There are approximately two billion children (persons under 18) 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 seemslogical). 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 1/1000th 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 cimney, 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 best) 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 thousands 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 traveling at 650 miles per second
creates enormous air resistance - this would heat up the reindeer in the same fashion as a spacecraft reentering
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 intheir wake. The entire reindeer team would be vaporized 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.
