Terra
24-12-2002, 08:06 AM
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 1/1000th
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 to get back up the
chimney 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 or 3,000 times the speed of sound. For
purposes of comparison, the fastest man made vehicle, the Ulysses space
probe, moves at a poky 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 thousand 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 the
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).
A mass of nearly 600,000 tons traveling 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
ludicrous considering all the high calorie snacks he must have consumed
over the years) 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.
******So have yourselves a very Merry Christmas******
Terra :twisted:
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 1/1000th
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 to get back up the
chimney 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 or 3,000 times the speed of sound. For
purposes of comparison, the fastest man made vehicle, the Ulysses space
probe, moves at a poky 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 thousand 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 the
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).
A mass of nearly 600,000 tons traveling 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
ludicrous considering all the high calorie snacks he must have consumed
over the years) 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.
******So have yourselves a very Merry Christmas******
Terra :twisted: