Jeremy's Sametime Status Proudly Presents: Santa Week!
The physics of supersonic reindeer are remarkable
In one of the most often asked questions about Santa's annual journey, the speed of the sleigh is extremely high in order to circumnavigate the globe in a single night. Basically covering an entire time zone's worth of houses every hour. This leads to some interesting physics questions and answers. In today's look behind the scenes of Santa's enterprise, we examine the physics of supersonic flight in reindeer.
So, we all know that Chuck Yeager was the first human to break the sound barrier in his X1 airplane. However, a particular elf and his reindeer have been taking part in supersonic flight for ages. It truly is an impressive feat.
Anyone who has studied high-speed flight (not this guy) knows full well that simply applying more force to a flying object is completely insufficient to break the sound barrier. The leading edge shockwave and lateral profile cause drag to increase exponentially as you approach Mach 1. Then, once you're past the sound barrier, inertia coupling takes over and causes all sorts of stability problems, since reindeer obviously don't have large empannages or stability augmentation systems. It's a problem, people!
So the fact that Santa's reindeer are able to avoid these traditional flight engineering problems is unique to this species. Fortunate for all of us, really, since we have to get our toys on time.
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