The miracle of Santa Claus
Have you ever wondered why you never see Santa Claus leaving presents under your Christmas tree? When we were young the gifts appeared like magic and even now you are older it is still important to believe in this magic.
The annual achievement of Santa and his team is nothing more than a miracle. Their productivity is amazing.
There are 2 billion children in the world but since Santa doesn’t visit Hindu, Muslim, Jewish and Buddhist households that reduces his workload to 15% of the total. If there are 3.5 children in each household (and at least one good child) he must visit 91.8 million homes.
Thanks to different time zones, Santa has 31 hours of Christmas to work with - meaning he does 822.6 visits per second. In just 1/1000th of a second he parks, hops out of the sleigh, climbs down the chimney, distributes the presents under the tree, eats whatever snacks have been left, gets back up the chimney into the sleigh and moves on to the next house. He travels much too fast for you to ever see him in your lounge room.
Santa’s total trip covers 120 million kilometres travelling at over 1000 kilometres per second. For purposes of comparison, the fastest man-made vehicle, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a snail’s pace 44 kilometres per second and a conventional reindeer can run at 24 kilometres per hour.
This is where Santa’s famous reindeers are so important. By being able to fly at great speed they can miss the traffic jams caused by last minute Christmas shoppers.
Santa’s sleigh can carry enormous loads. If each child gets nothing more than a medium-sized Lego set, the sleigh must carry over 315,000 tonnes (not counting Santa, who is himself a little on the plump side). This is almost four times the weight of the Queen Elizabeth cruise liner.
Moving this weight at these speeds would be catastrophic for mere mortals. The air resistance of 315,000 tonnes going at 1000 kilometres per second would heat up the reindeer like a spacecraft re-entering the earth's atmosphere. Conventional reindeer would absorb all this energy and burst into flames creating a deafening sonic boom in their wake. A normal person in Santa’s seat would be pinned down by centrifugal forces 17,500 times greater than gravity.
So as you rush to stock the fridge, wrap presents, hang decorations and complete the other pre-Christmas jobs, don’t forget to marvel at Santa and his reindeer. And just remember, the day you stop believing in Santa is when you start getting socks and soap-on-a-rope for Christmas.