Sure, Santa Claus delivers presents to all the good children in the world. But how? And why? We take a look at the science of Christmas gifts.
How fast does Santa travel?
If we assume that Santa has to travel 510,000,000km on Christmas Eve, and that he has 32 hours to do it (see here for the reasoning behind those numbers), then Santa will be travelling at 10,703,437.5km/hr, or about 1,800 miles per second, all night (assuming he never stops: some sort of sleigh-mounted present-launcher will be required to shoot gifts down chimneys while moving. The guidance system will have to be quite impressive, to avoid accidentally showering Afghan wedding parties with extra presents). It will probably also be advisable to have Santa catheterised to obviate the need for toilet breaks.
How much will his sleigh weigh?
Last year, we calculated Santa’s sleigh (carrying 700,000,000 Optimus Primes and dragged by three million reindeer) to weigh 1,232,300 metric tonnes. However, this year, thanks to the success of Toy Story 3, he will have to be carrying Buzz Lightyears, which have a boxed weight of 1.2kg compared to Optimus’s comparatively puny 659g. So that’s 840,000 tonnes of toys, which will require 5,600,000 reindeer to pull. Given each reindeer weighs around 272kg (600lb), the whole procession (assuming a weightless sleigh) will have a mass of 2,363,200 tonnes when standing still. Last year, however, we failed to take into account the relativistic increase in mass caused by the speed of the sleigh. Travelling at 10,703,437.5km/hr, or 0.97 per cent of light speed, the whole thing will have an apparent weight to a stationary observer of 2,363,310.33 tonnes.
Can reindeer fly?
We feel we should leave this to the Telegraph’s former science editor Dr Roger Highfield, who has written an entire book of that name. “Somewhere in the North Pole, or perhaps buried in a vast complex under Gemiler, there must be an army of scientists experimenting with the latest in high-temperature materials, genetic computing technologies and warped spacetime geometries, all united by a single purpose: making millions of children happy each and every Christmas”, he says. He takes a look at a few of the possibilities.
A rocket-powered sleigh is out of the question: the fuel costs would be prohibitive (not that that has stopped people drawing up possibilities). But if Santa’s elves - “undoubtedly the most spectacular research and development outfit this planet has ever seen” - have worked a way of warping space-time, allowing the sleigh to sit in a small bubble of space that itself moves, it could travel faster than light. Alternatively, wormhole technology could provide cosmic short-cuts, and would have the benefit of permitting time-travel, removing the constraint of having to get all the work done in one night.
But this all involves a powered sleigh. The reindeer themselves still need to be able to fly. This could be achieved by genetic engineering, altering the reindeer so their lungs are huge and filled with helium; they could even be born with wings and stabiliser fins. Or, as Professor Ian Stewart, Warwick University maths professor and occasional Telegraph contributor, points out: “Reindeer have a curious arrangement of gadgetry on top of their heads which we call antlers and naively assume exist for the males to do battle and to win females. This is absolute nonsense. The antlers are actually fractal vortex-shedding devices. We are talking not aerodynamics here, but antlaerodynamics.” At the speeds the reindeer have to travel to deliver gifts, their antler-tips would, apparently, create enough lift to allow them to fly.
Check out Can Reindeer Fly?: The Science of Christmas, by Dr Roger Highfield, for more information.
Read more at The Telegraph
Last year, we calculated Santa’s sleigh (carrying 700,000,000 Optimus Primes and dragged by three million reindeer) to weigh 1,232,300 metric tonnes. However, this year, thanks to the success of Toy Story 3, he will have to be carrying Buzz Lightyears, which have a boxed weight of 1.2kg compared to Optimus’s comparatively puny 659g. So that’s 840,000 tonnes of toys, which will require 5,600,000 reindeer to pull. Given each reindeer weighs around 272kg (600lb), the whole procession (assuming a weightless sleigh) will have a mass of 2,363,200 tonnes when standing still. Last year, however, we failed to take into account the relativistic increase in mass caused by the speed of the sleigh. Travelling at 10,703,437.5km/hr, or 0.97 per cent of light speed, the whole thing will have an apparent weight to a stationary observer of 2,363,310.33 tonnes.
Can reindeer fly?
We feel we should leave this to the Telegraph’s former science editor Dr Roger Highfield, who has written an entire book of that name. “Somewhere in the North Pole, or perhaps buried in a vast complex under Gemiler, there must be an army of scientists experimenting with the latest in high-temperature materials, genetic computing technologies and warped spacetime geometries, all united by a single purpose: making millions of children happy each and every Christmas”, he says. He takes a look at a few of the possibilities.
A rocket-powered sleigh is out of the question: the fuel costs would be prohibitive (not that that has stopped people drawing up possibilities). But if Santa’s elves - “undoubtedly the most spectacular research and development outfit this planet has ever seen” - have worked a way of warping space-time, allowing the sleigh to sit in a small bubble of space that itself moves, it could travel faster than light. Alternatively, wormhole technology could provide cosmic short-cuts, and would have the benefit of permitting time-travel, removing the constraint of having to get all the work done in one night.
But this all involves a powered sleigh. The reindeer themselves still need to be able to fly. This could be achieved by genetic engineering, altering the reindeer so their lungs are huge and filled with helium; they could even be born with wings and stabiliser fins. Or, as Professor Ian Stewart, Warwick University maths professor and occasional Telegraph contributor, points out: “Reindeer have a curious arrangement of gadgetry on top of their heads which we call antlers and naively assume exist for the males to do battle and to win females. This is absolute nonsense. The antlers are actually fractal vortex-shedding devices. We are talking not aerodynamics here, but antlaerodynamics.” At the speeds the reindeer have to travel to deliver gifts, their antler-tips would, apparently, create enough lift to allow them to fly.
Check out Can Reindeer Fly?: The Science of Christmas, by Dr Roger Highfield, for more information.
Read more at The Telegraph
No comments:
Post a Comment