(NORTH POLE)
Here comes Claus with a sled pulled by reindeer.
But what if the boss wants higher-tech gear?
Engineering a way,
To better pull his sleigh,
Future Santa is smiling ear-to-ear.
Give Santa a hand: Santa could use the new HANDi Hand technology that Patrick Pilarski (Computer '09, PhD) and his colleagues are developing. "You could imagine Santa with many HANDi Hands," Pilarski says. Painted red and coated with heat-resistant Kevlar, the additional appendages could allow many presents to be distributed simultaneously.
Sneak on by: Only the most observant of children would spot Santa in a metamaterial suit of active camouflage. "It would be like a Harry Potter cloak," says engineering professor John Nychka (Metallurgical '97). The new suit would be studded with tiny cameras that would take video of the surroundings and project it back onto the material.
Power up on the journey: To keep the iSanta phone charged up in Christmases to come, PhD student Jun Liu has made a valuable discovery. Working in Thomas Thundat's lab, he found a way to generate and harvest power from nanoscale vibrations: think of the rumble of an engine, a heartbeat or a flying sleigh.
Fly at hypersonic speed: Santa should consider a hypersonic scramjet engine, which has no moving parts but travels at nearly 10 times the speed of sound, meaning he could fly around the Earth in less than 3-1/2 hours. John Nychka says it's still in the prototype stage, but perhaps NASA would let Santa test it out. Don't be sad, Rudolph. He'll still need a mascot.
Keep the noggin safe: Don a helmet and rest assured that future helmets will go through rigorous testing by the likes of graduate students Megan Ogle and Brooklynn Knowles. Could sleigh-rated helmets be close at hand thanks to their work in Chris Dennison's lab?
Telescope those arms: "To avoid lit fireplaces or chance encounters with children, Santa could use a telescoping arm, with a camera in the palm, so he could do a flyby and just launch the presents down the chimney," Pilarski says. "The arm would look around the room through the camera and position the presents under the tree, then pop back out."
Reduce wear and tear on sleigh runners: The runners on Santa's new ride would need to withstand wear and extreme temperatures. Nychka says there are options: tungsten carbide and silicon nitride, wear-resistant materials used in metal-cutting tools; or boron carbide, the same material used in bulletproof vests.
Illustration by Michael Byers