Santa's Dead
17 December 2002, 11:53 AM
#1
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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 poky 27.4 miles per second, and a conventional reindeer can
run at 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). 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 reentering 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.
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 poky 27.4 miles per second, and a conventional reindeer can
run at 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). 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 reentering 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.
17 December 2002, 12:27 PM
#6
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Whilst racing his ELVES, who were riding the REINDEERS, during an overtaking manouver he carried out the famous Mercedes A Class ELK test, Santa induced FUEL SURGE which caused him to loose control at the same time as PICKING UP PISTON NO3 due to running lean. The PRODRIVE STI came to a halt after crashing through a FROZEN LAKE.
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