[RVRC] Merry Christmas

[Bryan D. Boyle]

Can't resist:

WHY ENGINEERS TAKE THE FUN OUT OF CHRISTMAS

There are approximately two billion children (considered as persons 
under 18) in the world. However, since according to tradition Santa 
probably 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, which comes 
to 108 million homes, we presume there is at least 1 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 1/1000th 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 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 or 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 forcing the 
lead pair of reindeer to 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 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 miles/second 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

-- 
Bryan
In this world, you must be oh so smart or oh so pleasant.
Well, for years I was smart. I recommend pleasant.
You may quote me.

Sent from my MacBook Pro.