Engineers View Of Christmas

[ST66]

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).

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
at an average (census) rate of 3.5 children per household, which
comes to 108 million homes, presuming there is at least 1 good child
in each. 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, get back up the chimney, jump into the sleigh and get on to
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 miles/second in .001 seconds,
would be subjected to acceleration forces of 17,000 g's. A 250 pound
Santa (which seems ludicrously slim 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.

Merry Christmas

[K2]

Originally Posted by ST66

Therefore, if Santa did exist, he's dead now.

Merry Christmas

I'm sure Scud will reward you for this gem. 55555555555555555555

[ST66]

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