Okay, so here’s the thing about Santa Claus. Every year, this elderly, overweight man somehow manages to lug giant bags of toys down millions of chimneys. He does this in the span of a couple hours, without being spotted, and without toppling off icy roofs.
It’s an impressive — if suspicious — series of feats. And Claus does, after all, have a history of suspicious behavior, including a series of alleged hit-and-runs involving grandmas.
So, how does he accomplish this annual chimney-hopping marathon? Claus could not be reached for comment. So instead, we quizzed two physics professors about Claus’s possible methods.
“I know magic is magic and everything, but last we checked, energy needs to be conserved.”
The main thing Claus needs is a serious source of energy, says Dave Custer, a physics and writing lecturer at MIT. From Custer’s back-of-the-envelope calculations, he estimates that Claus visits maybe a million households in the US in the span of approximately six hours. That means that each visit — including getting down the chimney, arranging presents, and getting back up again — can only take 0.0002 seconds.