Santa Theory
Date in my archives: 08-Dec-1995 (apparently originated
04-Dec-1995)
Forwarded with subject: Santa Research
After much research we present the annual aeronautical engineers
report on the theory of Santa.
- 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.
- 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 that there's at least one
good child in each.
- 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.
That 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 do at
lease once every 31 hours, plus eating 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
pokey 27.4 miles/second. A conventional reindeer can run, tops, 15
miles/hour.
- 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 300lb. Even granting
that "flying reindeer" (see #1) can 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.
- 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 create
deafening sonic booms in their wake. The entire reindeer 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, being very conservative in terms of
guessing Santas weight, 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.
Author: mike.peck@attws.com (Mike Peck) at INTERNET
Date: 12/4/95 2:12 PM