-
June 25th, 2002, 12:53 AM
#1
Santa Claus: An Engineer's Perspective
not even _slightly_ computer related...
I. There are approximately 2 billion children (persons under 18) in the world. However, since Santa does not visit children of Muslim, Hindu, Jewish, Jehovah's Witnesses, or Buddist religions, this reduces the workload on 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 that there is at least one good child in each.
II. Santa has about 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the different time zones and 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 at a good child, Santa has around 1/1000th of a second to park the sleigh, jump out, go 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 in the sleigh, and move on to the next house.
(That's why it's really pointless to stay up and wait for him....)
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 breaks. This means that Santa's sleigh is moving at 650 miles per second, 3000 times the speed of sound. For the purposes of comparison, the fastest man-made vehicle, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a pokey 75.4 miles per second, and a conventional reindeer can run (at best) 15 miles per hour.
III. The payload of the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming that each child has 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 nothing more than 300 pounds. Even granted that "flying" reindeer could pull ten times the normal amount, the job can't be done with eight or nine of them; Santa would need 360,000 of them. This increases the payload, not counting the sleigh itself, another 54,000 tons, or roughly seven times the weight of the Queen Elizibeth (the ship, not the monarch).
IV. 600,000 tons traveling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance; this would heat up the reindeer in the same fasion 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 causing deafening sonic booms in their wake. The entire reindeer team would be vaporized within 4.2 thousandths of a second, or right about the time Santa reaches the fifth house on his trip. Not that it matters, however, since Santa, as a result of accelerating from a dead stop to 650 miles per second in .001 seconds, would be subjected to centrifugal forces of 17,500 G's. A 250 pound Santa (which seem ludicrously slim) would be pinned to the back of the sleigh by 4,315,015 pound of force, instantly crushing his bones and organs and reducing him to a quivering blob of pink goo.
V. Therefore, if Santa did exist, he's dead now.
stolen from
here.......naturally.
Hmm...theres something a little peculiar here. Oh i see what it is! the sentence is talking about itself! do you see that? what do you mean? sentences can\'t talk! No, but they REFER to things, and this one refers directly-unambigeously-unmistakably-to the very sentence which it is!
-
June 25th, 2002, 05:10 AM
#2
That's one I haven't heard before. Good one.
-
July 19th, 2002, 06:31 PM
#3
-
July 19th, 2002, 10:27 PM
#4
Al
It isn't paranoia when you KNOW they're out to get you...
-
July 19th, 2002, 10:39 PM
#5
And it is not counted the time to open doors and windows locked in house without chimney!
In this point of view, I think that Santa Claus may be a robber during others 364 days of each years with those incredible abilities (in order to pay bills).
Life is boring. Play NetHack... --more--
-
July 20th, 2002, 12:01 AM
#6
A quite... *ahem* disturbing look at the Jolly Old Guy.
I know you\'re out there. I can feel you now. I know that you\'re afraid. You\'re afraid of us. You\'re afraid of change. I don\'t know the future. I didn\'t come here to tell you how this is going to end. I came here to tell you how it\'s going to begin. I\'m going to hang up this phone, and then I\'m going to show these people what you don\'t want them to see. I\'m going to show them a world without you, a world without rules and controls, without borders or boundaries. A world where anything is possible. Where we go from there is a choice I leave to you.
-
July 20th, 2002, 12:25 AM
#7
There are some members on this website that are like 9 years old. You may have just killed the innocence of dozens of children...
Congratulations
-
July 20th, 2002, 03:44 AM
#8
and the fact of trying to put a 500000 ton sleigh on top of a roof could really cause some damage.
Alternate realities celebrate reality. If you cant handle the reality your in, then you wont be able to handle the one your attempting to escape to.
-
July 21st, 2002, 10:06 PM
#9
Member
He must have a wicked compression utility for his payload. Wouldn't help on the weight problem though, it would only deal with the volume/density...
You can lead a yak to water, but you can\'t teach an old dog
to make a silk purse out of a pig in a poke
-Berke Breathed/ Opus The Penguin
-
July 21st, 2002, 10:18 PM
#10
He'd be fine if he is from K-PAX... Get it...tachyon speed, light, sunglasses, Kevin Spacey....nevermind...
Ouroboros
"entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem"
"entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity."
-Occam's Razor
Posting Permissions
- You may not post new threads
- You may not post replies
- You may not post attachments
- You may not edit your posts
-
Forum Rules
|
|