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 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.

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.

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.

353,000 tons travelling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance - this will heat the reindeer up in the same fashion as spacecrafts 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.

bad man bad man

lol

U just pwned santa

Yes I did

Why is this in clan public? O_O

Why indeed.

I nearly moved it into the rumour mill for lulz but decided against it.

T'is here for Gozzer and Kusa to read as well
And it isn't a rumour, it is using physics which is proven and real to prove that a rumour could be true but is most likely false

Huh? Yeah? BuT YOU CAN'T PROVE HE ISN'T REAL SOMEWHERE OUT THERE CAN YOU! CAN YOU!

NO1!! HE'S REAL!!!! :'(:'(:'(:'(:'(

dAMNIT HE's REAL!!!!! I'lL KILL YOU FOR SAYING THAT !!!! DON't destroy my hero! NO!!!!!

poor metty, still a child at heart

Sorry I just have to mess with this.



A good effort, a bit more effort needs putting in with your arguments, but you're improving, Grade: B

teachers dont use green pen, duh

B?! B?!?!?!?
Nice post though Si XD
Grade: A**************

I want to know where that energy figure came from.

Plus, as an attempt to use science, you must use the SI units of metres, seconds, kilograms, joules etc. Any other units, especially imperial, just result in failure. We are not American, and science is certainly not imperial.

Also, centraugal force does exist, but not in the way classical mechanics state it. It is actually the reactive centrafugal force which is simply the opposite to centrapetal force (every action has an equal and opposite reaction...). However, it looks like he is talking about centrapetal orce, but it's hard to know, seeing as it's completely wrong...
"pinned to the back of his sleigh"
Centrapetal forces act along the radius of a circle, there is no way he would be forced into the back of his seat. I he was upside down, he would be pinned to the bottom of his seat, and if he was the right way up, he would lit "up" out of his seat (in actual fact, he carries on in a straight line while the sled moved down away from him).

I would give this a D or below if it was a science/physics essay for all the things mentioned above. Remember SI units, show your workin (numbers are meaningless if we don't know where they come from - they become arbitary).

Blimey, for a pro Pyro Skillers really knows how to stab the knife into you
Ok, just to point out to Skillers:
1. This is not an essay, it is a joke.
2. I am taking AS Physics, not Uni Physics, give me a break already.
3. I wasn't being serious with it, therefore errors are bound to crop up.
4. Loosen up.
5. Si is nicer than Skillers... if you need a person to mark your work- go to Si.
6. It isn't an essay- Si decided to treat it as an essay for a joke by marking it as a teacher.
7. You should know where the numbers came from since you are taking uni Physics

to sum this up in two words

SANTA IS
(adding a third)
REAL!!

ofc santa is real, otherwise where do all those pressies come from ^^

1) You think I was serious?
2) Non of what I said is university level physics, there is nothing about waves, SHM, dimensional analysis, vectors or complex numbers there, and that is what I have done at uni. Also, you don't do thermodynamics and drag at AS.
3) And you think I was?
4) See 1 and 3
5) See 1, 3 and 4. Plus, I was just expanding on what Si said.
6) See 1, 3, 4 and 5.
7) I shouldn't need to work out the numbers for myself. Plus, by working in imperial, you make it take far too much efort to work it out.

Plus, that formulation of energy doesn't state anything to do with air density/altitude (they're related), so has absolutely no meaning. Also, absorbing 14.3TJ is meaningless anyway, you don't state a time frame for that, so it could be assumed that it happens over any amount of time, which could make it an absoloutely tiny amount. You either need to state a time or give it in Watts (Js^-1). As it is given in joules, I must assume that you haven't used a formula for the conversion of air resistance into (thermal) energy as that would give an answer in Watts.

EDIT:



No



Your mum.

Your Mum gets me presents? xD

thats Ludicrous, there in bed asleep!

yeh, adults get pressies 2* dont forget!!! ^^

*subject to good behaviour

Si, that was truly excellent. Made me lol.

............

Id be quite happy with mark marking my work i no id get it all wrongbut im sure the smiley face he puts on it will make me happy

And santa freezes time... dnt you people know anything hes magic thats how he makes reindeer fly and gets in dwn the chimney and carries all those presents in one sleigh...

Santa has a TARDIS?