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>From: theresa.shutey@harte-hanks.com
>Date: Thu, 19 Dec 96 09:57:19 PST
>To: jliveoak@harte-hanks.com, rsaxon@harte-hanks.com, gtroxell@harte-hanks.com,
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>Subject: (Fwd) Christmas Cheer
>X-UIDL: 3313f30021d02ea98a9ba455e4662987
>
>
>
>
>An engineers view of Santa.
>
> IS THERE A SANTA CLAUS?
>
>As a result of an overwhelming lack of requests, and with research help
>from that renowned scientific journal SPY magazine (January, 1990) - I am
>pleased to present the annual scientific inquiry into Santa Claus.
>
>1) No known species of reindeer can fly. BUT there are 300,000 species
>of living organisms yet to be classified, and while most of these are insects
>and germs, this does not COMPLETELY rule out flying reindeer which only Santa
>has ever seen.
>
>2) There are 2 billion children (persons under 18) in the world. BUT since
>Santa doesn't (appear) to handle the Muslim, Hindu, Jewish and Buddhist
>children, that reduces the workload to 15% of the total - 378 million
>according to Population Reference Bureau. At an average (census) rate of 3.5
>children per household, that's 91.8 million homes. One presumes there's at
>least one good child in each.
>
>3) Santa has 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 822.6 visits per second.
>This is to say that for each Christian household with good children,
>Santa has 1/1000th of a second to park, hop out of the sleigh, jump down
>the chimney, fill the stockings, distribute the remaining presents under
>the tree, eat whatever snacks have been left, get back up the chimney, get
>back into the sleigh and move on to the next house. Assuming that each of
>these 91.8 million stops are evenly distributed around the earth (which, of
>course, we know to be false but for the purposes of our calculations we will
>accept), we are now talking about .78 miles per household, a total trip of
>75-1/2 million miles, not counting stops to do what most of us must do at
>least once every 31 hours, plus feeding and etc. This means that 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 on earth, the
>Ulysses space probe, moves at a poky 27.4 miles per second - a conventional
>reindeer can run, tops, 15 miles per hour.
>
>4) The payload on the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming that
>each child gets nothing more than a medium-sized lego set (2 pounds), the
>sleigh is carrying 321,300 tons, not counting Santa, who is invariably
>described as overweight. On land, conventional reindeer can pull no more than
>300 pounds. Even granting that "flying reindeer" (see point #1) could pull
>TEN TIMES the normal amount, we cannot do the job with eight, or
>even nine. We need 214,200 reindeer. This increases the payload - not even
>counting the weight of the sleigh - to 353,430 tons. Again, for comparison -
>this is four times the weight of the Queen >Elizabeth.
>
>5) 353,000 tons traveling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air
>resistance - this will heat the reindeer up in the same fashion as spacecraft
>re-entering the earth's atmosphere. The lead pair of reindeer will absorb
14.3
>QUINTILLION joules of energy. Per second. Each. In short, they will burst
into
>flame almost instantaneously, exposing the reindeer behind them, and create
>deafening sonic booms in their wake. The entire reindeer team will be
>vaporized within 4.26 thousandths of a second. Santa, meanwhile, will be
>subjected to centrifugal forces 17,500.06 times greater than gravity. A
>250-pound Santa (which seems ludicrously slim) would be pinned to the back of
>his sleigh by 4,315,015 pounds of force.
>
>In conclusion - If Santa ever DID deliver presents on Christmas Eve, he's
>out of the business.
>
>
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