bluninja
12th December 2003, 10:06
The premise: Santa's incredible schedule. OK, folks, besides the fact that Santa takes all the focus off Jesus on the memorial of His birth, and besides the fact that Christmas is a business for the merchants this year, what about Santa? Yes, there was a man named Sinterklaus a long time ago, but he didn't go all over the place doling out toys, etc...So, why do we think Santa can do the impossible? Impossible, you say? I thought it would be in the public interest to quote some statistics about Santa that I found in December 26, 1996's New York Post.
No know species of reindeer can fly. But there are over 300,000 species of living organisms yet to be classified, and while most of these are insects, bugs, things you squelch under your boot, and germs, this does not completely rule out flying reindeer, which, let's face it, only Santa has ever seen. ·
There are 2,000,000 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 percent of the total, 378,000,000 according to the Population Reference Bureau. At an average rate of 3.5 children per household, that's 91.8 million homes. One presumes there is at least one good child at least. ·
Santa has 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the different time zones and the rotation of the earth, assuming he travels from 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 goodies have been left for him, get back up the chimney, unto sleigh and move on. Assuming that these 91.8 million stops are evenly distributed around the earth (without 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 million miles, not counting stops to do what most of us do at least once every 31 hours, plus feeding, etc. ·
This means Santa's sleigh is moving at 650 miles per second, 3,000 times the speed of sound. For the purpose of comparison, the fastest manmade vehicle on earth, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a pokey 27.4 miles per second. A conventional reindeer can run, tops, 15 miles per hour. ·
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 321,000 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" could pull 10 times the normal amount, we cannot do the job with eight or even nine. We need 214,000 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 QE II. ·
These 353,000 tons traveling at 650 miles per second create enormous air resistance. This will heat up the reindeer in the same fashion as a spacecraft re-entering the atmosphere. The lead pair of reindeer (you know, Rudolph and chum) will absorb 14.3 quintillion joules of energy per second each. In short, they will burst into flames almost instantaneously. Reindeer behind them will be toast 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 the sleigh by 4,315,015 pounds of force. ·
In short, if Santa ever did deliver presents on Christmas eve, <I>he's dead now.</I>
Who has the energy to think all this stuff up??
No know species of reindeer can fly. But there are over 300,000 species of living organisms yet to be classified, and while most of these are insects, bugs, things you squelch under your boot, and germs, this does not completely rule out flying reindeer, which, let's face it, only Santa has ever seen. ·
There are 2,000,000 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 percent of the total, 378,000,000 according to the Population Reference Bureau. At an average rate of 3.5 children per household, that's 91.8 million homes. One presumes there is at least one good child at least. ·
Santa has 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the different time zones and the rotation of the earth, assuming he travels from 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 goodies have been left for him, get back up the chimney, unto sleigh and move on. Assuming that these 91.8 million stops are evenly distributed around the earth (without 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 million miles, not counting stops to do what most of us do at least once every 31 hours, plus feeding, etc. ·
This means Santa's sleigh is moving at 650 miles per second, 3,000 times the speed of sound. For the purpose of comparison, the fastest manmade vehicle on earth, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a pokey 27.4 miles per second. A conventional reindeer can run, tops, 15 miles per hour. ·
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 321,000 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" could pull 10 times the normal amount, we cannot do the job with eight or even nine. We need 214,000 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 QE II. ·
These 353,000 tons traveling at 650 miles per second create enormous air resistance. This will heat up the reindeer in the same fashion as a spacecraft re-entering the atmosphere. The lead pair of reindeer (you know, Rudolph and chum) will absorb 14.3 quintillion joules of energy per second each. In short, they will burst into flames almost instantaneously. Reindeer behind them will be toast 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 the sleigh by 4,315,015 pounds of force. ·
In short, if Santa ever did deliver presents on Christmas eve, <I>he's dead now.</I>
Who has the energy to think all this stuff up??