Yer a mean one, Mr. Grinch...
Now, all that time spent with a calculator and books to try and dissolve
Santa. I'm sure Mr. Isaac Newton would be proud, but our science still can't
explain 80% of Astronomical phenomenon, and we still aren't 100% sure of the
world in which we live. Obviously this person has never experienced the
"magic" of Christmas. When you believe in things beyond what you can see,
then anything is possible. If Santa has to have "Warp Drive" to do his job
then so be it. Does it require a "Matter/Anti-Matter" reaction or can he have
"Oat Powered" supernatural reindeer to do it? Oh, heh, there's that word :
Supernatural. Last time I checked it meant "Something beyond or outside of
nature". I suppose Santa fits rather well in that category. Since he does,
all that time with *NATURAL* physics seems like kinda a waste to me...
Just to make things even worse for poor Newtonian Physics... Santa is not
restricted to Christianity. He has some secular origins and many, many
religious and non-religious people alike believe in him or some variant of
him. I am quite certain that his power is unlimited when it comes to
spreading joy and happiness around the world. If everyone believed, even for
one day a year, that this wonderful soul existed, maybe we could solve our
problems without killing each other in wars. We would have a fundamental
understanding of what real peace, love, forgiveness and "being nice" is all
about. Even if you can't believe in God, take a baby step and try Santa, the
worst you may get out of it is a lump of coal...
Shaun H.
---original message---
> 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
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Fri Jun 20 2003 - 12:11:32 EDT