posted 12-12-2001 01:30 PM            

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
seems
logical). 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 chimney, 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 these
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.

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 8 or even 9 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 travelling at 650 miles per
second
creates enormous air resistance -
this would heat up the reindeer in the same fashion as a spacecraft
re-entering 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 in their 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. 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.

Merry Bloody Christmas.