In a message dated 12/16/2002 9:32:11 AM Pacific Standard Time,
dspence@oanet.com writes:
> 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 pinn
> ed
> 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.
>
But..........in the recesses of our imagination..........perhaps
not...........
Clark
Laughed a lot!.........but ya just can't kill Santa, Eh?
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