O.T. Don't let the Kids read this!

The Physics of Santa and His Reindeer

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.

There are two billion children (persons under 1 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.

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= 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.

If every one of the 91.8 million homes with good children were to put out a
single chocolate chip cookie and an 8 ounce glass of 2% milk, the total
calories (needless to say other vitamins and minerals) would be
approximately 225 calories (100 for the cookie, give or take, and 125 for
the milk, give or take). Multiplying the number of calories per house by the
number of homes (225 x 91.8 x 1000000), we get the total number of calories
Santa consumes that night, which is 20,655,000,000 calories. To break it
down further, 1 pound is equal to 3500 calories. Dividing our total number
of calories by the number of calories in a pound (20655000000/3500) and we
get the number of pounds Santa gains, 5901428.6, which is 2950.7 tons.

The payload on 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 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 above) 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. 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