NationStates Jolt Archive

With all these Christianity, Christ, Jesus threads about, I determined the holiday season must be upon us. So, this is the perfect time to reveal my calculations about the nocturnal activities of one Santa Claus!

Since 1708 (perhaps 1707) people have been asking "How an earth can Santa deliver ALL the presents to ALL the kids in just one day?!?"

I think I now have an answer to that. If it seems too scientifical, it's because IT IS.

Okay,

There's 6.6 billion people, of which, according to statistics, 27% are age 15 or less. So that leaves us with 1.78 billion 'kids'. That's the demographic Santa preys.
Now, Santa only deals with western, Christian people, so we can count out all the Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists and such. That leaves us with roughly 15% of the 'kid' lot for Santa to visit. That's some 267 300 000 kids total.

Now I must make an assumption; let's say there's 3 kids per family (you may, of course, correct me and do your own math)... That leaves 89 100 000 households for Santa to visit. These households are mainly situated in the Americas, Europe and Australia, but naturally Santa has to make commando attacks to Asia to cater for all those faithful families outside the sphere of his influence...

Of course, it's essential that Santa is ready to rumble somewhere in the Oceanic islands well before the start. Startig from there, and following the Earths rotational direction, he can get extra hours. 31 total.


SO, now he has 27 hrs to spend. That's 110 600 seconds. So it's 792 households each second. Now, 1/1000 of a second doesn't seem like a long stop, but quit your whining - you WILL get presents! The average speed of Santa on his estimated route is approximately 1000 km/s.


Easy.


But let's carry on... Let's assume every kid gets present weighing half a kilo. That means the sleigh weighs 13 650 tonnes. Mighty heavy. I estimate it takes some 300 000 reindeers to pull it, but I'm no reindeer expert. Maybe his reindeers ARE special. Special enough to produce 15 * 10(30) joules of energy per second just to fly the sleigh through air (that's 15 000 000 000 000 000 000 J/s). Santa has probably easily solved the problems caused by friction of the air in high speeds like 1000 km/s.


ERGO: Santa most definately exists and CAN do the job.

Then where the hell is my Ferrari!?

Well you have to wait for the Elf Delivery Service for your Ferrari.

Is there a Santa Clause? (http://www-cs-students.stanford.edu/~dufour/HUMOR/Santas.html)

As a result of an overwhelming lack of requests, and with research help from that renown scientific journal SPY magazine (January, 1990) - I am pleased to present the annual scientific inquiry into Santa Claus.

1) No known species of reindeer can fly. BUT there are 300,000 species of living organisms yet to be classified, and while most of these are insects and germs, this does not COMPLETELY rule out flying reindeer which only Santa has ever seen.

2) There are 2 billion children (persons under 18) in the world. BUT since Santa doesn't (appear) to handle the Muslim, Hindu, Jewish and Buddhist children, that reduces the workload to 15% of the total - 378 million according to Population Reference Bureau. At an average (census) rate of 3.5 children per household, that's 91.8 million homes. One presumes there's at least one good child in each.

3) Santa has 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the different time zones and the rotation of the earth, assuming he travels east to west (which seems logical). This works out to 822.6 visits per second. This is to say that for each Christian household with good children, Santa has 1/1000th of a second to park, hop out of the sleigh, jump down the chimney, fill the stockings, distribute the remaining presents under the tree, eat whatever snacks have been left, get back up the chimney, get back into the sleigh and move on to the next house. Assuming that each of these 91.8 million stops are evenly distributed around the earth (which, of course, we know to be false but for the purposes of our calculations we will accept), we are now talking about .78 miles per household, a total trip of 75-1/2 million miles, not counting stops to do what most of us must do at least once every 31 hours, plus feeding and etc.

This means that 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 on earth, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a poky 27.4 miles per second - a conventional reindeer can run, tops, 15 miles per hour.

4) 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, conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. Even granting that "flying reindeer" (see point #1) could pull TEN TIMES the normal amount, we cannot do the job with eight, or even nine. We need 214,200 reindeer. This increases the payload - not even counting the weight of the sleigh - to 353,430 tons. Again, for comparison - this is four times the weight of the Queen Elizabeth.

5) 353,000 tons traveling at 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.

In conclusion - If Santa ever DID deliver presents on Christmas Eve, he's dead now.

:p

Ahh those strange units of pounds and miles. Thanks.

Oook. Wow....

Good work, although I heard Santa was going to publish all his experiences in his autobiography this year. Should be a good read, might be a good stocking filler.

Clearly any sensible Santa would have worked out that he alone controls how much he works by deciding who's been naughty and nice, and therefore it makes much more sense to postulate the existence of an extremely corrupt Santa who only pops around a few houses where he knows there's going to be good stuff to eat before heading down the pub to fill the time until he can come back and pretend he's been working the whole time.

Clearly any sensible Santa would have worked out that he alone controls how much he works by deciding who's been naughty and nice, and therefore it makes much more sense to postulate the existence of an extremely corrupt Santa who only pops around a few houses where he knows there's going to be good stuff to eat before heading down the pub to fill the time until he can come back and pretend he's been working the whole time.
Ah, brilliant, Sir! Rendering mere half of the kids naughty, he could prolong each stay to 1/500 second. Good thinking.

EDIT: Uhhh... 3 kids per family... what are the chances they are all naughty..? Well, guilty by association, I guess.

There's 6.6 billion people, of which, according to statistics, 27% are age 15 or less. So that leaves us with 1.78 billion 'kids'.

99% of teenagers stopped believing in Santa when they were 10 or 11 (if they believed in him at all). Therefore, the number of kids in the world is significantly less.

Well you have to wait for the Elf Delivery Service for your Ferrari.

Nah he'l have to wait longer, the elves are striking on account of not having enough pay, i mean honestly santa's all happy and cheery with his customers but well when it comes to his workers, a whole different ball game.
i for one am with the Elves. I think it's undemocratic for Santa to deliver presents only to children.

And what about the calculations for how much food, of carrots and mince pies santa is left to eat?

Nah he'l have to wait longer, the elves are striking on account of not having enough pay, i mean honestly santa's all happy and cheery with his customers but well when it comes to his workers, a whole different ball game.
i for one am with the Elves. I think it's undemocratic for Santa to deliver presents only to children.

And what about the calculations for how much food, of carrots and mince pies santa is left to eat?
Yeah, well never mind that... The Lakota secede! This is peanuts.

Clearly any sensible Santa would have worked out that he alone controls how much he works by deciding who's been naughty and nice, and therefore it makes much more sense to postulate the existence of an extremely corrupt Santa who only pops around a few houses where he knows there's going to be good stuff to eat before heading down the pub to fill the time until he can come back and pretend he's been working the whole time.

this is backed up by how Santa only really cares about rich kids

As a kid I assumed he had the ability to stop time and thereby make all the deliveries in what, to the outside world, appeared to be one night. For him however it probably takes many months, during which he eats and drinks only mince pies and whisky, hence the obesity and constant "jolliness".

15 000 000 000 000 000 000 J/s ?! Santa should focus on reducing his carbon footprint a little. We're not causing global warming, Santa is!

15 000 000 000 000 000 000 J/s ?! Santa should focus on reducing his carbon footprint a little. We're not causing global warming, Santa is! Reindeer are high efficiency. And what Santa can't reduce, he offsets. He should be more concerned about global warming than most of us. If those ice caps keep melting, his palace is going to end up in the Arctic Ocean.