[meteorite-list] Santa Physics...again for 2008

From: Steve Dunklee <sdunklee72520_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Sat, 13 Dec 2008 20:16:12 -0800 (PST)
Message-ID: <81639.12762.qm_at_web33206.mail.mud.yahoo.com>

Awe thats no fun Grinch!
Have a merry christmas everyone!
Steve


--- On Sat, 12/13/08, Dark Matter <freequarks at gmail.com> wrote:

> From: Dark Matter <freequarks at gmail.com>
> Subject: [meteorite-list] Santa Physics...again for 2008
> To: "Meteorite List" <meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com>
> Date: Saturday, December 13, 2008, 8:38 PM
> Hi All,
>
> It seems it has befallen upon me to hold the job of
> official Santa
> Physics story reposter. So, in the true spirit of the
> season, here it
> is yet again.
>
> And as usual, I have not checked the math.
>
> Enjoy.
>
> Martin
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Engineering Christmas: Some points of contention.
>
> 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
> household, that comes to 108 million homes, presuming that
> there is at
> least one good child in each dwelling.
>
> 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 about 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 purpose 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 other breaks.
>
> This requires that Santa's sleigh moves at 650 miles
> per second--3000
> 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 conventional reindeer can run at best 30
> 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 500,000 tons, not
> counting Santa
> himself. On land a conventional reindeer can pull about 300
> pounds.
> Even granting that the "flying" reindeer could
> pull ten times the
> normal amount, the job just cannot be done with eight or
> nine of
> them-- Santa would need 360,000 reindeer!
>
> 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).
>
> 4.600,000 tons traveling 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 (which
> may explain
> Rudolph's red nose). The lead pair of reindeer would
> absorb 14.3
> quintillion joules of energy per second. In short, they
> would
> instantaneously vaporize exposing the reindeer behind them
> to the same
> friction and also creating deafening sonic booms in their
> wake. The
> entire reindeer team would vanish 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 per second in .001 seconds,
> would be
> subjected to centrifugal forces of 17,500 Gs. 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 red-hot blob of goo. And yet,
> he returns
> year after year.
>
> Therefore, the rules of physics obviously don't apply
> to Santa and his
> yearly mission. Speaking as an engineer, this guy must know
> something
> about relativity that we have yet to discover.
>
> HO, HO, HO.
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Received on Sat 13 Dec 2008 11:16:12 PM PST