Graham
You do realise the energy required to visit 30 million households in just an hour or
two? Santa would need to metabolise these products into energy to do this work, in
which case they would turn essentially into global-warming gases, such as CH4, CO2, NOx
and H2O. However, one hopes he would slip a few cookies into his pocket for Dancer,
Prancer, Rudolph & Co. We all know that if he is offered any alcoholic liquor, he keeps
that aside for Rudolph, hence the colour of the said animal's nose.
Brian
Collins, Graham wrote:
> Phil
> There's more proof - consider the snacks left out for Santa. If 1/3 of the
> households leave out say 250ml of milk (small glass) and 2 cookies, there's
> no way the guy could get up a chimney - that works out to about 7500 cubic
> meters of milk and 60 million cookies!
>
> My conclusion: if there is a Santa I want to know how he manages these
> things. I'm betting he doesn't use hocus-pocus like 6 sigma...
>
> A Merry Christmas to all!
>
> - Graham Collins
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Phil Zarrow [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
> Sent: Friday, December 17, 1999 10:04 AM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: [TN] Critical Analysis and Evaluation of Santa Claus
>
> 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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Brian Ellis
Protonique SA
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