Santa Breaking Physics

The Physics of Santa

by Mason Marrari

Out of all the holiday traditions and beliefs in the world, Santa is one of the most common. Each Christmas, millions of children anticipate the arrival of St. Nick down their chimneys, bringing along an abundance of gifts. What these children don’t acknowledge is how Mr. Claus is trespassing on numerous physical laws as he goes about his festive travels each Christmas. What exactly would Santa have to do in order to complete each and every one of his tasks?

Arguably, the most preposterous aspect of the Wonder Worker’s journey is how he is able to visit every single house all in one night. According to Forbes.com, Santa would have time to visit each house out of 500 million households for only 0.0003 seconds! In order to achieve this, Santa, if using an engine instead of reindeer, would have to travel approximately 4,921,200 miles per hour, which is 1,367 miles per second (4,921,200 miles per hour). This speed is far superior to the Parker Solar Probe developed by NASA that will eventually reach its top speed of 430,000 miles per hour in a few years. Addionally, going at a speed of 4,921,200 miles per hour is not simple like it may seem in science fiction. The faster an object travels, the more heat it absorbs. At a crazy speed like that, Santa and his gifts would be turned into ashes, unless his sleigh was fitted with a very well built thermal protection system, sort of like the one on the Parker Solar Probe. Another possible solution for heat protection is for Santa, or his elf scientists, to invent an ion shield filled with charged particles as bravely suggested by Phys.org, but that is a whole different story. If his sleigh had the ability to not burn up, trying to slow an object that fast would be very dangerous. To visit each house he would have to make millions of quick, hard stops at 1,367 miles per second, and based on the data, all in under 0.0003 seconds a piece. Where Santa would be receiving a budget for a ground-breaking engine and enough fuel to supply it beyond the minds of many.

Furthermore, did you know that the estimated weight of gifts Santa hauls around totals to about 101 million pounds? That’s just for one present for each child in the USA. As mentioned by Desert.com, 101 million pounds of gifts would not be easy at all to carry in one sleigh alone. This would be similar to carrying about 1,629 copies of the Statue of Liberty. Santa’s one-horse open sleigh would not only have to be extremely fast; it would have to be exceedingly strong and large. Now this sleigh would definitely not be landing on anyone’s roof, or street, for that matter. Also noted by Desert.com, if Santa would be using absurdly fast, flying reindeer to pull the sleigh, he would have to train an immense army of 339,333 reindeer in order to pull all of that weight. This does not include all of the other countries that Santa would provide gifts for. The amount of reindeer, weight, and space on the sleigh would have to drastically increase.

Last, but certainly not the least, is how Santa somehow has to be able to consume millions of calories from milk and cookies all in 42 hours across all timezones. Delish.com says an average number of 336,150,386 cookies are put out for Santa each year: . Not to mention the millions of glasses of milk that are left out for Santa every year. Santa’s stomach would have to be thousands upon thousands of times bigger than him to fit all of that food inside of him. Since Santa only has 0.0003 seconds to spend per house, he would have to be the world’s fastest eater, even faster than Joey Chestnut. In the end, Santa is a fun tradition for young children around the world, but it is probably best to not try to understand how exactly that man provides gifts to every household in the world.