Tuesday, December 19, 2006

Santa's Annual Journey Extremely Dangerous

I don't know who figured this out, but it shows the lengths Santa will go to make sure the children of the world are happy. The author shows himself to be skeptic. But not us! Below are the laws of physics Santa must endure for our kids. God bless him!

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 and 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, 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 822.6 visits per second. This is to say that for each Christian household with good children, Santa has 1/1000th of a second to park, hop our 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 an 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 purpose of our calculations we will accept), we are now talking about .78 miles per household, a total trip of 75« million miles, not counting stops to do what most of us must do at least once every 31 hours, plus feeding, etc. This means that Santa’s sleigh is moving at 650 miles per second, 3,000 time 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 per second - a conventional reindeer can run, tops, 15 miles per 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 pounds), the sleigh is carrying 321,300 tons, not counting Santa, who is invariably described as overweight. On land, the conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. Even granting the “flying reindeer” (see point #1) could pull TEN TIMES the normal amount, we cannot do the job with eight, or even nine. We need 214,200 reindeer. This increases the payload -not even counting the weight of the sleigh - to 353,430 tons. Again, for comparison - this is four times the weight of the Queen Elizabeth.

5) 353,000 tons travelling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance - this will heat the reindeer up in the same fashion as spacecraft re-entering 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 4.26 thousandths of a second. Santa, meanwhile, will be subjected to centrifugal forces 17,500.06 times greater than gravity. A 250-pound Santa (which seems ludicrously slim) would be pinned to the back of his sleigh by 4,315,015 pounds of force. In conclusion - If Santa ever DID deliver presents on Christmas Eve, he’s dead now.


Santa dead? No way! It's just like science to steal away the mystery!

4 Comments:

At 10:04 AM, Blogger Cranky Yankee said...

Welcome back....

Here are some questions on the subject of Santa. Would not Santa require godlike power to acheive his journey? Should good christians be teaching their kids about Santa and his "super-natural" powers? Don't they encroach on the realm of god? Could Santa be the work of somone else, like...oh say....SATAN?

Do the jumble people! It's right there in front of you. Flying reindeer are the work of the Beastmaster!

Happy Festivus!

 
At 1:02 PM, Blogger Underground Logician said...

LOL!

I found a website who does the word jumble. Absolute idiocy. I will not refer to it since it is embarrassing to see Christians engaged in this type of il-logic and non-thought.

I think it is fine to teach kids about Santa Claus as an actual person, St. Nicholas, and his saintly actions and attitudes, and his love for Christ.

Egad! Festivus? Do you have a list of grievances, and do we wrestle until I pin you to the ground? I can see why George ran out of the house screaming!

Merry Christmas, Cranky!

 
At 3:17 PM, Blogger Cranky Yankee said...

I think the significance of the simple aluminum pole can not be overstated in the age of the "uber" commercialization of a time of year that many cultures celebrate as a time of reflection and peace. My daughter and I also made a Peace Wreath this year.

The airing of grievances can be considered areas of improvement for the coming year.

The feats of strength are an homage to the classical games of our ancestors. My boys are getting bigger and soon they might pin me. Now that will be a glorious day!

A Festivus for the rest of us!

Happy Holidays to you and yours!

 
At 5:36 PM, Blogger Underground Logician said...

Thanks! You also. With my bad back and my full grown sons, Festivus will be VERY short this year!

 

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