It is unfortunate that you have assumed that Santa is composed of flesh
and blood and lives in a three dimensional world like us earthlings.
Those who know that Santa actually does exist are aware that he is a
spirit. He is just as real as a sunset, the wind and a certain feeling
one gets when he gets behind the wheel of a supercharged 5.9L Dodge and
slams the pedal to the metal. Some things are hard to explain, but yes
Lynne, there really is a Santa Clause. I suggest you get yourself a '99
5.9L Dakota RT and you too will then know.
Merry Christmas
"Lynne M. Ellsworth" wrote:
>
> PHYSICS TAKES THE FUN OUT OF CHRISTMAS
>
> 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 (except maybe in Japan) 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 there is at least one good child in each.
>
> Santa has about 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the
> Different time zone and the rotation of the earth, assuming 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 stocking, 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 onto 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.
>
> 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 can pull 10 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). A mass of nearly 600,000 tons travelling at 650 miles per
> second creates 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 adsorb 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 .001 seconds, would be subjected to acceleration forces of
> 17,000 g's. A 250 pound Santa (which seems ludicrously slim considering
> all the high calorie snacks he must have consumed over the years) 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
> blob of pink goo. Therefore, if Santa did exist, he's dead now. Merry
> Christmas
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