THE PHYSICS OF SANTA  

1. There are about 2,106 million kids (under 18) across the globe waiting for Santa. Assuming 2.5 children occupy each household, how many rooftops must Santa visit during his Christmas journey?
2. If the Earth’s radius is 3986 mi (6378 km), what is the surface area in square miles?
3. Only 29% of the Earth is land. Calculate the populated surface area (in square miles) that Santa visits?
4. The distance Santa travels to bring joy to the world’s children is impressive given his mode of transportation. If the average distance between each household is 0.26 miles, calculate the distance Santa must cover in one night?
5. Naturally, Santa is quite wise and takes advantage of the international dateline by traveling in the opposite direction of the Earth’s rotation. Thus, he has 48 hours to accomplish his global tour. Convert his travel time into seconds.
6. Santa has 48 hours to travel the distance calculated in Question 4.  Now calculate the average speed in miles per second and miles per hour that those reindeer must maintain in order to complete Santa’s journey in a timely manner.
7. Given that the speed of sound is 750 mph at the sruface of the Earth, or 0.2 miles/s, how many times faster than the speed of sound does Santa travel - (i.e. What is his Mach number?
8. Unfortunately, even Santa is limited by the cosmic speed limit - the speed of light. Einstein and Santa had numerous discussions about relativity and wormholes, but couldn’t exceed light speed.(The speed of light is equal to 300 million m/s or 186,000 mi/s.  Using the info from Question 6, what percent of the speed of light does Santa travel?
9. When Santa travels from chimney to chimney, he must start from rest and reach the next chimney in 2/10,000 seconds due to time constraints. Rudolph informed me that Santa must go from 0 to 2,558 miles per second, (which is 4 116 701.95 m/s,) in this time. Calculate Santa’s acceleration in miles per second and meters per second.
10. Given your knowledge of Earth’s acceleration due to gravity, how many g's is Santa experiencing?
11. Santa is a bit overweight and has a jolly mass of 200 kg.  Given his mass and acceleration (from Question 9), find the force (in newtons) that Santa withstands during this historic flight?
12. Finally, consider the weight of the toys that Santa’s sleigh must carry for the world’s children.  If each child receives 0.9 kg worth of presents, calculate the weight (in kg and tons) of the load in Santa’s sleigh upon leaving the North Pole.