by Sherri A. Stanczak

Created on: November 29, 2009

Statistics About Santa Claus

If Santa was to deliver packages to children all over the world in a sleigh, pulled by eight or nine reindeer, all in one night, then there are some facts to consider. For one, if he were to travel east to west, he would have 31 hours to accomplish this task, thanks to the different time zones. With this in mind, we must figure that there are two billion children in the world, under the age of 18, who might be receiving gifts from Santa. If we take off 15 percent of the children who of religious background and don't believe in Santa, we are left with 378 million children. There is an average of 3.5 children per household, which leaves us 91.8 million homes to visit and at least one good child in each home.

This means Santa must make 822.6 visits per second. He has to park the sleigh, hop down the chimney, put the presents under the tree, fill the stockings, take a bite from the cookie, get back up the chimney, jump back in the sleigh and take off in 1/100th of a second.

More Things To Consider

The whole trip is approximately 75.5 million miles. That means that Santa's sleigh moves at a speed of 650 miles per second, which is 3,000 times the speed of sound. The Ulysses Space probe is the fastest man-made vehicle and it moves at 27.4 miles per second. Actually, reindeer typically run at a speed of 15 mph.

Let's assume that each child's bag of presents weigh about two pounds (which is on the low side). This adds up to about 321,300 tons that Santa hauls, not to mention fat Santa, who is definitely overweight from all of the cookies he has eaten. A normal reindeer can pull about 300 pounds. Even if the reindeer could pull ten times its weight that adds up to 214,200 reindeer that Santa would need to pull this weight. This many reindeer increases the weight to 353,430 tons.

With 353,430 tons traveling at a speed of 650 miles per second would create quite a wind resistance. This kind of resistance would heat up the reindeer as a meteor or spacecraft would when they meet the atmosphere. The reindeer leading the pack would absorb 14.3 quintillion joules of energy. This means the reindeer in front would burst into flames immediately. This would expose the other reindeer and create an extremely loud sonic boom. All of the reindeer would be vaporized in 4.26 thousandth of a second. Santa would then be pinned against the sleigh at 4,315,015 pounds of force. It was fun believing this could happen though.

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