Santa

Discussion in 'General' started by RTT, 22 Dec 2001.

  1. RTT

    RTT #parp

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    blantantly ripped from another forum but i thought it was amusing ;)

    SANTA CLAUS: An Engineer's Perspective

    I Capacity

    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 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 house hold, that comes to
    108 million homes, presuming that there is at least one good child in
    each.

    II Time & Speed

    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 round
    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.

    III Weight

    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).

    IV Velocity

    600,000 tons travelling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air
    resistance --- this would heat up the reindeer in the same fashion as
    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 vaporised 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 .001seconds, would be subjected to centrifugal
    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 reducing him to a smear of goo.

    V Conclusion

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

    :cool:
     
  2. _iNFiNiTy-

    _iNFiNiTy- Banned

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    Y... Y... You mean he's not real?!?! :mad:

    Heh, that's actualy quite good that :) Who the hell are these people who work this stuff out though?
     
  3. Jamie

    Jamie ex-Bit-Tech code junkie

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    some very bored physics students probably
     
  4. Guest-16

    Guest-16 Guest

    ROFL!! 3000 times the speed of sound and 360,000 reindeer with heat resistant clothing on :D:D

    Maybe he has some cousins to help??
     
  5. Zmaster2k

    Zmaster2k You looking at me?

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    arnt they your parents???
     
  6. Guest-16

    Guest-16 Guest

    Umm.. no my parents arent both related to santa!?!:confused:
     
  7. vivid

    vivid down in fraggle rock

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    you people are all stupid, everybody knows that santa magicaly stops time on christmas eve so that all the presents can be delivered.
    :)
     
  8. K

    K 528491

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    Yeah too right mate, glad we're on the same wavelength cause I was waitin for someone else to mention that :D :D
     

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