I come from that branch of the protestents called Anglican. They are too
overly given to scientific analysis of things not based upon reason.
I read that last week that some fool of a vicar in Britain (presumably
Anglican) stood in for a local St. Nick at a shopping centre or party. He
seems to have read the same article as you and informed the children that
there could be no real Santa Claus because he would burst into flames as he
attempted to perform his duties. The children (in an attempt to quench the
fire no doubt) promptly burst into tears.
You have to wonder at times. So I suppose the idea is to reassure the
children that St. Nick is alive and working his magic. But have a bucket of
water standing ready beside the fireplace... :^)
Cheers,
Mark Hooper
-----Original Message-----
From: Don Spence [mailto:dspence@oanet.com]
Sent: Monday, December 16, 2002 12:30 PM
To: triumphs@autox.team.net
Subject: SANTA CLAUS: AN ENGINEER9S PERSPECTIVE No LBC as Lucas, Dunlop
etc just couldn't cut it
SANTA CLAUS
AN ENGINEER9S PERSPECTIVE
I/ There are approximately two billion children (persons under 18) in the
world, however since Santa does not visit children of Muslim, Hindu, Jewish
or Buddhist religions, this reduces the workload for Christmas night to 15%
of the total, or 378 million (according to the population reference bureau).
At an average (census) rate of 3.5 children per household, that comes to 108
million homes, presuming that there is at least one good child in each.
II/ Santa has 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the different
time zones and the rotation of the earth, assuming he travels east to west
(which seems logical). This works out to 967.7 visits per second. This is to
say, that for every Christian household with a good child, Santa has around
1/1000 of a second to park the sleigh, hop out, jump down the chimney, fill
the stockings, distribute the remaining presents under the tree, eat
whatever snacks have been left for him, get back up the chimney, jump into
the sleigh and get on to the next house. Assuming that each of these 108
million stops is evenly distributed around the earth (which of course, we
know to be false, but will accept for the purpose of our calculations). We
are talking about 1.25 Km per household, a total of 120.8 million Km, not
counting bathroom stops or breaks. This means Santa9s sleigh is moving at
1040 Km per second........3,000 times the speed of sound. For purposes of
comparison, the fastest man-made vehicle, the Ulysses space probe, moves at
a poky 43.8 Km per second, and a conventional reindeer can run (at best) 25
Km per hour.
III/ The pay load of the sleigh adds another interesting element.
Assuming that each child gets nothing more than a medium Lego set (two
pounds), the sleigh is carrying over 500 thousand tons, not counting Santa
himself. On land, a conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds,
even granting that the "flying" reindeer could pull ten times the normal
amount, the job can9t be done with eight or even nine of them......Santa
would need 360,000 of them. This increases the payload, not counting the
weight of the sleigh, another 54,000 tons, or roughly seven times the weight
of the Queen Elizabeth (the ship, not the monarch).
IV/ 600,000 tons traveling at 1040 Km per second creates enormous air
resistance....this would heat up the lead reindeer in the same fashion as a
space shuttle re-entering the earth9s atmosphere. The lead pair of reindeer
would absorb 14.3 quintillion joules of energy per second each. In short,
they would burst into flames almost instantaneously, exposing the reindeer
behind them and creating deafening sonic booms in their wake. The entire
reindeer team would be vaporised within 4.26 thousandths of a second, or
right about the time Santa reached the fifth house on his trip. Not that it
matters, however, since Santa, as a result of accelerating from a dead stop
to 1040 k p s in .001 seconds, would be subjected to centrifugal forces of
17,500 G9s. A 250 pound Santa (which seems ludicrously slim) would be pinned
to the back of the sleigh by 4,315,015 pounds of force, instantly crushing
his bones and organs and reducing him to a quivering blob of pink goo.
V/ Therefore, if Santa did exist, he9s dead now.
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