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 that 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 he travels 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 stockings, 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 on to 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 the purposes of our 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 thousand tons, not counting Santa himself. On land, a conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. Even granting that the 'flying' reindeer could pull ten times the normal amount, the job can't be done with eight or even nine 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 traveling 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 absorb 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 17,500 g's. 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 Christmas

Jim Farmer

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READERS COMMENTS

1. Posted by fenris, 26/12/2023 0:14

"@Jim, I'm slightly disappointed to see an insufficient amount of two things us engineers love the most -- empirical data and pessimism! Looking back to my childhood, in my circle of schoolmates, friends and relatives, I can't think of any one of them who would have had a non-zero integral for bad behaviour, taken over the year from Christmas-to-Christmas. Extrapolating from that 0, to an overall 0, then adding some margin and making that 5, and then doubling it "just in case", I make it at most 10 children Santa has to visit each year. I leave the resulting re-calculations to the reader, as well as wishing them a belated Merry Christmas and an advance Happy New Year!"

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2. Posted by Max Noble, 25/12/2023 2:35

"@Defiant - you can always flush out true engineers by pulling a slide rule from the back of the cupboard and see who rushes forward crying “Brilliant! How fascinating…!” Cannot have too much maths at Christmas ;-)
"

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3. Posted by Defiant, 25/12/2023 1:29

"Oh, this made me laugh hard. I can't believe some stranger gave me the gift of laugh at Christmas. I also can't believe that someone actually sat and did that much math for that."

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4. Posted by kenji, 24/12/2023 6:11

"Someone had to go and ruin the very last 'good story' left in the universe!!! "

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5. Posted by Max Noble, 23/12/2023 10:30

"I’m crying! A cracking engineering take on the considerable issues Santa must wrestle each festive season!

Most enjoyable!

I can only imagine that Santa and Rudolf have a handy device not unlike a cross between a Flux-capacitor (Back to the Future), and an inertia-less drive (Lensman series). Anything less, and Santa, as you rightly highlight, is toast!
"

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6. Posted by trackrecords, 23/12/2023 6:00

"If we have reindeer that can fly, then we can stretch a few more situations as well. What if Santa can stop time, and move between them destinations in an instant.
What if Santa and his sleigh can move to a specific location and be dormant, until activated by the primary Santa's arrival: a bit like a pre-selector gearbox. The sleigh is waiting at the next good child's house, and as Santa climbs onto the Sleigh, the dormant Sleigh is suddenly activated and he does his work, as the another Sleigh is moving to the next house on the list.
In the same way as the F1 team's equipment is sea freighted around the world, and waiting at multiple houses in turn. Santa moving at the speed of light between houses.
Oh as for 'comfort' breaks - he'd easily sweat away any fluids he drinks and the sugar content of mince pies would keep his vital energy levels maintained.
Regarding the friction levels of travelling at such speeds, where did you think is the origin of Rudolph's red nose?"

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7. Posted by Burton, 23/12/2023 1:38

"Brilliant!"

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8. Posted by ClarkwasGod, 22/12/2023 18:45

"Oops - emojis didn't work!!"

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9. Posted by ClarkwasGod, 22/12/2023 16:39

""quivering blob of pink goo"

There's a few Santas in shopping centres look similar!!

Merry Christmas one and all 🎅🎄🎅🎄🎅🎄🎅"

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10. Posted by Motorsport-fan, 22/12/2023 13:33

"This confirms we are living in a computer simulation, merry christmas everyone."

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An Engineer's Perspective on Santa

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