beansbaxter
Needs a life
Posts: 5911
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posted December 22, 2005 04:01 PM
An engineer's perspective on 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 equates to 108 million homes, presuming, of course, 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 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. 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 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).
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 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 0.00426 seconds, 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 mps in 0.001 seconds would be subjected to acceleration forces of 17,500 Gs. A jolly 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.
   
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osti33
Needs a job
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posted December 22, 2005 04:04 PM
LOL! That's pretty good.
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worm~hole
Needs a life
Miles to go before I sleep....
Posts: 10623
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posted December 22, 2005 04:18 PM
....SANTA IS FOR REAL AND HIS WORK ON THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS IS PURE MAGIC...MAGIC CANNOT BE CALCULATED...ITS JUST MAGIC....ENGINEERS CANNOT EXPLAIN OR CALCULATE HOW MAGIC WORKS...NOBODY CAN....BECAUSE ITS MAGIC....
____________
“We sleep safe in our beds because rough men
stand ready in the night to visit violence on those
who would do us harm.”
-George Orwell
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sagot
Zone Head
Posts: 779
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posted December 22, 2005 05:15 PM
YA! What he said!
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ozzy
Needs a job
need guberment cheese
Posts: 3172
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posted December 22, 2005 05:51 PM
quote:
....SANTA IS FOR REAL AND HIS WORK ON THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS IS PURE MAGIC...MAGIC CANNOT BE CALCULATED...ITS JUST MAGIC....ENGINEERS CANNOT EXPLAIN OR CALCULATE HOW MAGIC WORKS...NOBODY CAN....BECAUSE ITS MAGIC....
Listen to Wormie, he knows what he is talking about!
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worm~hole
Needs a life
Miles to go before I sleep....
Posts: 10623
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posted December 22, 2005 07:05 PM
...yeah..what sagot and ozzy said!
____________
“We sleep safe in our beds because rough men
stand ready in the night to visit violence on those
who would do us harm.”
-George Orwell
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NOX
Needs a job
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posted December 22, 2005 08:07 PM
my brain hurts.........
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tuusinii
Pro
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posted December 22, 2005 11:15 PM
Bean, You indeed forgot to take the "nayghty" kids away. And in fact maybe You are one of them if You don't believe in Santa? If You would have been good You'd seen a Santa and couldn argue - right? 
Or else it is "Beam me up, Scotty..."
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Hells Dark Lord
Needs a life
living life, and loving it.
Posts: 7981
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posted December 23, 2005 07:33 AM
Santa can control time.....so he can relax a bit......and take his time....
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When in doubt, lean farther and go faster....
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zx12girl
Pro
Adrenaline Junkie
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posted December 23, 2005 08:22 AM
"An engineer's perspective "
I am with ya Bean!!! 
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Life is an adventure. Are you driving?
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Marcos Peguero
Zone Head
Posts: 568
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posted December 25, 2005 02:51 PM
Im a budist and Santa exist anyway.......
I help him and make his workload lighter. and my daughter is a little devil so....imagine.
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swft
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Full throttle!
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posted December 25, 2005 04:35 PM
You forgot to mention the cleanup job after 360000 reindeer 'deposit' themselves on your roof!
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Scooter
Zone Head
Posts: 899
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posted December 26, 2005 04:44 AM
Yeah but, here's the catch, you said "conventional reindeer". Silly man, Santa rides a ZRX. With a 1109 bore kit, ZX11 cams, and a Muzzy megaphone....
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"Growing old is inevitable, growing up is optional."
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