As a responsible and prominent engineer I feel it’s my duty to set the record straight. (Plus I really REALLY want a new netbook for Christmas). While I don’t like the idea of disseminating these lies, I still feel like I need to let you know what we’re up against:

“There are approximately 380 Million children celebrating Christmas. This averages to about 1/1000 of second for Santa to visit each home, deliver gifts, eat some cookies, and move on to the next house. Santa would need to travel at 650 miles per second to travel to each home in one night. (Approx 3000 time the speed of sound) The speed he would need to travel combined with the weight of all the toys would result in 17500 Gs and the heating due to air resistance would incinerate the rein deer, Santa and sleigh in less than a single second.”

Personally, I think the fact that Santa has been doing his job for longer than I’ve been alive is evidence enough that these “theories” are incorrect. But let’s get into the physics of it. The underlying problem is that Santa has some many stops to make, right?

Well that’s only a problem if you are using Newtonian based physics. By simply applying quantum mechanics, specifically quantum superposition, Santa is theoretically able to visit every house at the same time!

Why? because quantum superposition supposes that “if the world can be in any configuration, any possible arrangement of particles or fields, and if the world could also be in another configuration, then the world can also be in a state which is a superposition of the two.” Or, since there is an equal chance of Santa being in any one individual house at any individual moment, he can be assumed to be in EVERY individual house at ANY individual moment. (Since everyone is asleep and we don’t see which home he visits, he visits them all, not unlike Schrödinger’s cat). This means he only makes one round trip from the North Pole to your home and back, greatly reducing these “top speed” and “payload” issues.

But, since he still needs to travel across the globe in several
hours there is still an issue of heating from air resistance!

Casual observers may note that it is actually this heating which causes Rudolph’s nose to glow red! This carbon-carbon phenolic nose actually trips the boundary layer and forces a phase change (from gas to plasma) in the atmosphere surrounding the sleigh. This ends up bleeding off the heat, keeping Santa and his precious payload cool. (This not unlike when the Space shuttle re-enters the Earth’s atmosphere)

Yes Virginia, there is a Santa Claus, and he is a brilliant engineer and physicist.

And for all you REAL nerds out there: