Merry Christmas Everybody!
Seeing how we're wishing each other happy holidays, I ran across
something on the 'NET that us "nerdy types" can really appreciate, putting
things in true perspective regarding this so-called "Santa Clause" character.
As a child, I always had a sneaking suspicion that something wasn't quite
right with what I was heard about Santa Clause. But being the little greedy
brat that I was, I didn't want to "rock the boat" with my concerns fearing
that I might jeopardize the loot I was getting every year on December 25th. In
that light, the following is the report from a study that was conducted to
prove, or disprove the existence of this so-called Santa Clause...
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 the 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 different time
zones and the rotation of the earth, assuming he travels west to east (which
seems logical, jetstreams typically flow in that direction). This works out to
822.6 visits per second. This is to say that for each Christian household with
good children, Santa has a whopping 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 watering the
reindeer, etc. To accomplish his mission, 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 has always been
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
reindeer. We would 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 Mary.
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 any
spacecraft reentering the earth's atmosphere would. 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...
-Steve Gregory-(GRIN)
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