🚀 go-pugleaf

Someone finally worked out the numbers on this Santa guy, and there's bad
news!!  Hope everyone enjoys!

John Peterson
PETERSJL3522@SNYONEVA.CC.ONEONTA.EDU

>>Comments: Resent-From: Patrick Crispen <PCRISPE1@UA1VM>
>>
>>IS THERE A SANTA CLAUS? (from a post to the HUMOR newsgroup)
>>============================================================
>>
>>As a result of an overwhelming lack of requests, and with research help from
>>that renowned scientific journal SPY magazine (January, 1990) - I am pleased
>>to present the annual scientific inquiry into Santa Claus.
>>
>>1)  NO KNOWN SPECIES OF REINDEER CAN FLY.
>>    BUT there are 300,000 species of living organisms yet to be classified,
>>    and while most of these are insects and germs, this does not COMPLETELY
>>    rule out flying reindeer which only Santa has ever seen.
>>
>>2)  THERE ARE 2 BILLION CHILDREN (persons under 18) IN THE WORLD.
>>    BUT since Santa doesn't (appear to) handle the Muslim, Hindu, Jewish &
>>    Buddhist children, that reduces the workload to 15% of the total - 378
>>    million according to Population Reference Bureau.  At an average (census)
>>    rate of 3.5 children per household, that's 91.8 million homes.
>>    One presumes there's at least one good child in each.
>>
>>3)  SANTA HAS 31 HOURS OF CHRISTMAS TO WORK WITH.
>>    This is due to the different time zones and the rotation of the earth,
>>    assuming he travels east to west (which seems logical).  This works out
>>    to 822.6 visits/second.
>>
>>    This is to say that for each Christian household with good children,
>>    Santa has .001 second to park, hop out of the sleigh, jump down the
>>    chimney, fill the stockings, distribute the remaining presents under
>>    the tree, eat whatever snacks have been left, get back up the chimney,
>>    get back into the sleigh and move on to the next house.
>>
>>    Assuming that each of these 91.8 million stops are evenly distributed
>>    around the earth (which, of course, we know to be false but for the
>>    purposes of our calculations we will accept), we are now talking about
>>    .78 miles/household, a total trip of 75.5 million miles; not counting
>>    stops to do what most of us must do at least once every 31 hours, plus
>>    feeding & etc.
>>
>>    So Santa's sleigh must be moving at 650 miles/second, 3,000 times the
>>    speed of sound.  For purposes of comparison, the fastest man-made vehicle
>>    on earth, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a poky 27.4 miles/second.
>>    A conventional reindeer can run, tops, 15 miles/hour.
>>
>>4)  THE PAYLOAD ON THE SLEIGH ADDS ANOTHER INTERESTING ELEMENT.
>>    Assuming that each child gets nothing more than a medium-sized lego
>>    set (2 lb.), the sleigh is carrying 321,300 tons, not counting Santa,
>>    who is invariably described as overweight.  On land, conventional reindeer
>>    can pull no more than 300 lb.  Even granting that "flying reindeer"
>>    (see #1) could pull 10 TIMES the normal amount, we cannot do the job
>>    with 8, or even 9 reindeer.  We need 214,200.  This increases the payload
>>    - not counting the weight of the sleigh - to 353,430 tons.
>>     This is four times the weight of the ocean-liner Queen Elizabeth.
>>
>>5)  353,000 TONS TRAVELING AT 650 MILES/SECOND CREATES ENORMOUS AIR
>>    RESISTANCE.
>>    This will heat the reindeer up in the same fashion as a spacecraft
>>    reentering the earth's atmosphere.  The lead pair of reindeer will absorb
>>    14.3 QUINTILLION joules of energy.  Per second.  Each.  In short, they
>>    will burst into flame almost instantaneously, exposing the reindeer behind
>>    them, and creating deafening sonic booms in their wake. The entire reindee
   r
>>    team will be vaporized within .00426 of a second.  Meanwhile, Santa,
>>    will be subjected to centrifugal forces 17,500.06 times greater than
>>    gravity.  A 250-lb. Santa (seems ludicrously slim) would be pinned to
>>    the back of his sleigh by 4,315,015 lb. of force.
>>
>>    If Santa ever DID deliver presents on Christmas Eve, he's dead now.