[s-cars] Fw: Subject: Santa De-bunk - NAC

[Steve Marinello]

Hmmm...I'm an engineer. But then I believe in the theory of elastic time
(enjoyably described in "Thief of Time" by Terry Pratchett) and that Santa
has all the time he needs.

And if reindeers can fly, presents can and will magically be in his sack
when he needs them..even Hollywood (no engineers) got that right in Santa
Clause.  You know, an upgrade to SC carrying a bag full of all the toys all
the time.  Hey, maybe an alien visitor passed on some welcome technology.

Hollywood (maybe the aliens, too) had an explanation/solution for the
chimney thing, too.

Merry Christmas!

Steve

 ----- Original Message -----
From: "tblack" <Tblack5 at cogeco.ca>
To: <s-car-list at audifans.com>
Sent: Thursday, December 05, 2002 10:10 AM
Subject: [s-cars] Fw: Subject: Santa De-bunk - NAC


> Couldn't resist sending this!
>
>
>
> > Subject: Santa De-bunk
> >
> > Santa Claus:  An Engineer's Perspective
> >
> > 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).  At an average (census) rate of 3.5
> > children per household, that comes to 108 million homes, presuming that
> > there is at least one good child in each. Santa has about 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 967.7  visits per second. 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
> > stockings, 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--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 could pull ten 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).
> > 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 absorb 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 m.p.s. in ..001 seconds, would be subjected to acceleration
> > forces of 17,500 g's. A 250 pound Santa (which seems ludicrously slim)
> > 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,
> >
> > Tom
> >
> > Views expressed in these postings are those of other weirdos and not
> > necessarily those of this weirdo.
> >
>
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