No British car content,but it`s amusing. I DO think however, that Lucas
may have done some of the engineering.
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 30 Nov 1994 10:30:16 -0800 (PST)
From: Anthony Case <easu816@rigel.oac.uci.edu>
To: heidi king <easu767@rigel.oac.uci.edu>
Subject: ho ho ho
I wish I could say I wrote this, but I didn`t. Not sure where
it`s from. Happy holidays to all.
IS THERE A SANTA?
1. No known species of reindeer can fly. But there ARE 300,000 species
of living organisms yet tobe classified,and while most of these are
insects and germs,this does not completely rule out flying reindeer,
which only santa has seen.
2. There are 2 billion children (under 18) in the world. But since santa
doesn`t appear to handle Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist and Jewish children,
that reducesthe workload to 15% of the total- 378 million or so. At an
average rate of 3.5 children per household, thats 91.8 million homes. One
presumes thers at least one good child in each.
3. Santa has 31 hours ofChristmas to work with,thanks to time zones and
the rotation of the earth,assuming he travels east to west. This works
out to822.6 visits per second. This is to say that for each Christian
household with good children,Santa has 1/1000 th of a second to park, hop
out of the sleigh,jump down the chimney,fill the stockings, distribute
the remaining gifts under the tree,eat the snacks,get back up the
chimney,get back in the sleigh,and move on to the next house. Assuming
that each of these 91.8 million homes are distributedevenly (which we
know to be false but for the sake of these calculations we will accept)
we are now talking about .78 miles per household, a total trip of75 1/2
million miles, not counting bathroom stops.
This means that Santa`s sleigh is travelling at 650 miles per
second, 3000 times the speed of sound. For comparison, the fastest man
made vehicle, the Ulysses space probe moves at a poky 27.4 MPS; the
average reindeer runs at 15 MPH.
4. The sleighs payload adds another interesting element. Assuming that
each child gets nothing more than a medium sized Lego set(2 pounds), the
sleigh is carrying 321,300 tons not counting Santa, who is invaribly
described as overweight. On land, conventional reindeer can pull no more
than 300 pounds. Even granting that "flying reindeer" (see point one)
could pull TEN TIMES the usual amount, we can not do the job with 8 or
even 9. we need 214,000 reindeer. This increases the weight,not even
counting the sleigh, to 353,430 tons. Again, for comparison this is 4
times the weight of the Queen Elizabeth 2.
5. 353,000 tons traveling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air
resistance. This will heat the reindeer in the same manner as a
spacecraft re-entering the earths atmosphere.The lead pair of reindeer
will absorb 14.3 QUINTILLION joules of energy. Per second. Each. In
short, they will burst into flame almost instantaneously, exposing the
next pair of reindeer, and creating deafening sonic booms in their wake.
The entire team will be vaporized within 4.26 thousands of a second.
Santa,meanwhile, will be subjected to centrifugal forces 17,500.06 times
the force of gravity. A 300 pound Santa would be pinned to the back of
his sleigh by 4,315,015 pounds of force.
6. Conclusion: There was a Santa,but he`s dead now.
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