Santa Clause - An Engineers Perspective

Bright Red Nipples

SANTA CLAUS: An Engineer's Perspective.

I. No known species of reindeer can fly. However, there are some
300,000
species of living organisms yet to be classified. While most of these
are insects and germs, this does not completely rule out flying
reindeer
(which only Santa has ever seen).

II. There are approximately two billion children (persons under 1

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.

III. 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.

IV. 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 who is invariably described as overweight. 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).

V. 600,000 tons traveling at 650 miles per second crates 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. Santa, meanwhile, would be subjected to centrifugal forces
17,500 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.

VI. In conclusion, if Santa ever did deliver presents to all the good
children on Christmas Eve, HE'S DEAD NOW.
_________________

God Bless You Blue Ruler

Gamepro65 · Registered User Joined: 02 Dec 2001 Posts: 710

nice, just nice

_________________

Stevo · Posted: Mon Dec 22, 2003 6:46 pm Post subject:

Silley engineers! He uses magic!

_________________

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Song of the Week

ROOFCUTTER · Posted: Mon Dec 22, 2003 7:42 pm Post subject:

KillerRoofcutter · Posted: Mon Dec 22, 2003 8:01 pm Post subject:

Spanish Warpig · Posted: Mon Dec 22, 2003 11:40 pm Post subject:

k i have one point to add. a 500,000 ton sleigh moving at that speed would would likely wipe out all life on earth if santa's sleigh ever did crash.
_________________
And Pig ponders, Why do people play HW when they know I'm just going to shoot them in the head?
<TVB>Spanish Warpig... Old school Sniper if there ever was
when in doubt, blame failure, frag
Rest is peace trig ill miss ya buddy
Rest in peace Blue...

Warhammer · Posted: Tue Dec 23, 2003 9:31 am Post subject:

Santa H4X!!!! OMFG!!!
_________________
Support wildlife. Throw a party!

cobra · Posted: Tue Dec 23, 2003 10:13 am Post subject:

i can't believe i just read the hole thing.

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Monk

sgt stutter · Posted: Tue Dec 23, 2003 4:53 pm Post subject:

Potato-VS- · Posted: Tue Dec 23, 2003 6:45 pm Post subject:

shockwave

[HALO]MasterChief · Posted: Tue Dec 23, 2003 9:06 pm Post subject:

Potato-VS-

My Personal Insanity