AN ENGINEER'S VIEW OF SANTA CLAUS 
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1) 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. 

2) 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. 

3) 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
he earth (which, of course, we know to be false but for the purposes of our
calculations we will accept), we are now talking about 0.78 miles per
household, a total trip of 71.604 million miles, not counting stops to do
what most of us must do at least once every 31 hours, plus feeding 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. 

4) 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 eed 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. 
 
5) 353,000 tons traveling 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
been vaporized by now. 


Enjoy,
Jacob