Lucien1964
07-22-03, 09:52 PM
http://www.tribalwar.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=24790
This post was created by....Pachacutec
Pachacutec
Veteran³
1 - Posted 12-19-2000 10:52 AM
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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 zones 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
1/1000 th 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 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). 600,000 tons traveling at 650 miles per second creates
enormous air resistance - this would heat up the reindeer in the same fashion
as a spacecraft reentering 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 vaporized 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) 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 post was created by....Pachacutec
Pachacutec
Veteran³
1 - Posted 12-19-2000 10:52 AM
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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 zones 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
1/1000 th 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 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). 600,000 tons traveling at 650 miles per second creates
enormous air resistance - this would heat up the reindeer in the same fashion
as a spacecraft reentering 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 vaporized 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) 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.