[meteorite-list] Engineering Christmas

From: Jerry Flaherty <grf2_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Sat, 19 Dec 2009 19:52:04 -0500
Message-ID: <48A043F470A84D97BD3C0271FFECC6CA_at_ASUS>

" However, since Santa does not visit children of Muslim, Hindu,
Jewish or Buddhist religions"
Hmmmm, In light of the current state of global tensions, we may have to
revise Santa's preferential circuit. We ought to form a committee!

--------------------------------------------------
From: "Dark Matter" <freequarks at gmail.com>
Sent: Saturday, December 19, 2009 7:27 PM
To: "Meteorite List" <meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com>
Subject: [meteorite-list] Engineering Christmas

> Hi All,
>
> Once again, it seems it has befallen upon me uphold the job of official
> Santa
> Physics story reposter. So, in the true spirit of the season, here it
> is yet again.
>
> And as always, 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, OC.
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Received on Sat 19 Dec 2009 07:52:04 PM PST