Yeah, but you forgot about the "magic dust."
R. Ashford Little II
www.geocities.com/ralittle2
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-triumphs@autox.team.net
[mailto:owner-triumphs@autox.team.net] On Behalf Of Don Spence
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.
/// triumphs@autox.team.net mailing list
/// or try http://www.team.net/cgi-bin/majorcool
/// Archives at http://www.team.net/archive
|