Hi Technetsters -
Just where would this world be without engineers? In your work and in your
life, try not to overanalyse things.
Happy Holidays to all.
Phil Zarrow
ITM, Inc.
Durham, NH USA
www.ITM-SMT.com
Is There A Santa Claus?
1. No known species of reindeer can fly. BUT there are
300,000 species of living organisms yet to be classified, and
while most of these are insects and germs, this does not COMPLETELY rule
out flying reindeer which only Santa has ever seen.
2. There are 2 billion children (persons under 18) in the
world. BUT since Santa doesn't (appear) to handle the Muslim,
Hindu, Jewish and Buddhist children, that reduces the workload to 15% of
the total - 378 million according to Population Reference Bureau. At
an average (census) rate of 3.5 children per household, that's 91.8
million homes. One presumes there's at least one good child in
each.
3. 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
822.6 visits per second. This is to say that for each Christian
household with good children, Santa has 1/1000th of a second to park, hop
out of the sleigh, jump down the chimney, fill the stockings, distribute
the remaining presents under the tree, eat whatever snacks have been
left, get back up the chimney, get back into the sleigh and move on to
the next house. Assuming that each of these 91.8 million stops are
evenly distributed around the earth (which, of course, we know to be
false but for the purposes of our calculations we will accept), we are
now talking about .78 miles per household, a total trip of 75-1/2
million miles, not counting stops to do what most of us must do at least
once every 31 hours, plus feeding and etc.
This means that 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 on earth, the Ulysses space
probe,
moves at a poky 27.4 miles per second; a conventional reindeer can run,
tops, 15 miles per hour.
4. The payload on the sleigh 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 invariably described as overweight. On
land, conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. Even
granting that "flying reindeer" (see point #1) could pull TEN TIMES
the normal amount, we cannot do the job with eight, or even nine.
We need 214,200 reindeer. This increases the payload - not even
counting the weight of the sleigh - to 353,430 tons. Again, for
comparison
- this is four times the weight of the Queen Elizabeth.
5.353,000 tons traveling at 650 miles per second creates
enormous air resistance - this will heat the reindeer up in the
same fashion as spacecraft re-entering the earth's 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 reindeer behind them, and create
deafening sonic booms in their wake. The entire reindeer team will
be vaporized within 4.26 thousandths of a second. Santa, meanwhile,
will be subjected to centrifugal forces 17,500.06 times greater than
gravity. A 250-pound Santa (which seems ludicrously slim) would be
pinned to the back of his sleigh by 4,315,015 pounds of force.
In conclusion - If Santa ever DID deliver presents on Christmas
Eve, he's dead now.
I can't wait to question my parents!
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