Santa Clause? A Mathematical Proof of Non-Existence

[Looks like this engineer had nothing better to do with his time, so he came up with a mathematical proof for the non-existence of Santa Claus…]

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 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 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 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 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.

5) 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.

QuotaBills
Love is metaphysical gravity. - R Buckminster Fuller

The best proof of love is trust. - Joyce Brothers

There is no gravity. The earth sucks. - Graffito

Science is the record of dead religions. - Oscar Wilde

Architecture begins where engineering ends. - Walter Gropius

Maintenance is as much art as it is science. - Unknown

All science is either physics or stamp collecting. - Ernest Rutherford

Men love to wonder, and that is the seed of our science. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life. - Immanuel Kant

Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy. - Benjamin Franklin

Halloween starts earlier and earlier, just like Christmas. - Robert Englund

All exact science is dominated by the idea of approximation. - Bertrand Russell

It is the proof of a bad cause when it is applauded by the mob. - Seneca

Medicine is a science of uncertainty and an art of probability. - William Osler

Mathematics is the science which uses easy words for hard ideas. - James Roy Newman

Science is what you know, philosophy is what you don't know. - Bertrand Russell

To err is human; to try to prevent recurrence of error is science. - Unknown

Proof is an idol before whom the pure mathematician tortures himself. - Sir Arthur Eddington

Success is a science; if you have the conditions, you get the result. - Oscar Wilde

It is through science that we prove, but through intuition that we discover. - Jules Henri Poincare

There is no such thing as science fiction, there is only science eventuality. - Steven Spielberg

Science is the ascertainment of facts and the refusal to regard facts as permanent. - Unknown

Scientists discover the world that exists; engineers create the world that never was. - Theodore von Karman

I built my church on Easter services, Christmas Eve services, and Norman Vincent Peale. - Robert H. Schuller

True and solemn meaning of Christmas, which is a time for peace and quiet contemptation. - Archie Bunker

Genetic Engineering: A recent attempt to formalize what farmers have been doing all along. - Unknown

Mathematics is the cheapest science. All one needs for mathematics is a pencil and a paper. - George Polya

There's a big overlap with the people you meet at the fantasy and science fiction cons. - Fred Saberhagen

Might make a real good Christmas present for the uninformed. The book is called 'Taking America Back.' - Paul Harvey

In the sick room, ten cents' worth of human understanding equals ten dollars' worth of medical science. - Martin H. Fischer

Statistics: the only science that enables different experts using the same figures to draw different conclusions. - Evan Esar

I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again. - Oscar Wilde

The Swedish engineer who invented the zip fastener made a greater intellectual leap than many scientists do in a lifetime. - Martin Rees

True faith rests upon the character of God and asks no further proof than the moral perfections of the One who cannot lie. - A.W. Tozer

In the choice between changing one's mind and proving there's no need to do so, most people get busy on the proof. - John Kenneth Galbraith

Did you read about Starbucks? No more "Merry Christmas" at Starbucks. No more. Maybe we should boycott Starbucks. - Donald Trump

There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact. - Mark Twain

Science is built up with facts, as a house is with stones. But a collection of facts is no more a science than a heap of stones is a house. - Jules H Poincare

Nothing has afforded me so convincing a proof of the unity of the Deity as these purely mental conceptions of numerical and mathematical science. - Mary Somerville

Whenever you are embarrassed, just remember that in 1999 NASA destroyed a $655 Million project because the engineers mistook kilograms and pounds. - Unknown

see also Christmas & Engineering Sections
Modern Santa Claus

Santa Claus or Santa Clause?

Mathematical proof of Non-Existence

01-Jun-2020