Post by blackest_knight on Dec 13, 2003 0:36:29 GMT -5
I know, I know, this is rather old. But it is the season, and I always get a laugh when I read it. Enjoy.
>Subject: Santa - a engineers viewpoint
>
>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 (except maybe in Japan) 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 there is
>at least one good child in each. Santa has about 31 hours of Christmas to
>work with, thanks to the different time zones and the rotation of the
>earth, assuming east to west (which seems logical).
>
>This works out to 967.7 visits per second. This is to say that for each
>Christian household with a good child, Santa has around 1/1000 th of a
>second to park the sleigh, hop out, jump down the chimney, fill the
>stocking, 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 onto 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
>purposes of our calculations), we are now talking about 0.78 miles per
>household; a total trip of 75.5 million miles, not counting bathroom stops
>or breaks. This means Santa's sleigh is moving at 650 miles 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 pokey 27.4 miles per
>second, and a conventional reindeer can run (at best) 15 miles per hour.
>
>The payload of the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming that
>each child gets nothing more than a medium sized LEGO set (two pounds), the
>sleigh is carrying over 500 thousands tons, not counting Santa himself. On
>land, a conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. Even
>granting that the "flying" reindeer can pull 10 times that normal amount,
>the job can't 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). 600,000 tons travelling at 650 miles
>per second creates enormous air resistance - this would heat up the
>reindeer in the same fashion as a spacecraft re-entering the earth's
>atmosphere.
>
>The lead pair of reindeer would adsorb 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 vaporized
>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 650 m.p.s. in .001 seconds, would be subjected to
>acceleration forces of 17,000 g's. 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.
>
>Therefore, if Santa did exist, he's dead now.
>
>Merry Christmas,
>
>The 'Grinch'
>Subject: Santa - a engineers viewpoint
>
>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 (except maybe in Japan) 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 there is
>at least one good child in each. Santa has about 31 hours of Christmas to
>work with, thanks to the different time zones and the rotation of the
>earth, assuming east to west (which seems logical).
>
>This works out to 967.7 visits per second. This is to say that for each
>Christian household with a good child, Santa has around 1/1000 th of a
>second to park the sleigh, hop out, jump down the chimney, fill the
>stocking, 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 onto 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
>purposes of our calculations), we are now talking about 0.78 miles per
>household; a total trip of 75.5 million miles, not counting bathroom stops
>or breaks. This means Santa's sleigh is moving at 650 miles 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 pokey 27.4 miles per
>second, and a conventional reindeer can run (at best) 15 miles per hour.
>
>The payload of the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming that
>each child gets nothing more than a medium sized LEGO set (two pounds), the
>sleigh is carrying over 500 thousands tons, not counting Santa himself. On
>land, a conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. Even
>granting that the "flying" reindeer can pull 10 times that normal amount,
>the job can't 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). 600,000 tons travelling at 650 miles
>per second creates enormous air resistance - this would heat up the
>reindeer in the same fashion as a spacecraft re-entering the earth's
>atmosphere.
>
>The lead pair of reindeer would adsorb 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 vaporized
>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 650 m.p.s. in .001 seconds, would be subjected to
>acceleration forces of 17,000 g's. 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.
>
>Therefore, if Santa did exist, he's dead now.
>
>Merry Christmas,
>
>The 'Grinch'