"SANTA - THE ENGINEER'S PERSPECTIVE...."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
There are approximately two billion children (persons under 18) in
the world. However, since Santa 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, that comes to
108 million homes, presuming that there is at least one 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 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 a good child, Santa has around 1/1000th of a second to park the
sleigh, hop out, jump 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 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 that Santa's sleigh is
moving at 650 miles per second--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 could pull ten 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). 600,000 tons traveling 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. 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 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 m.p.s. in .001 seconds, would be subjected to
acceleration forces of 17,500 g's. A 250 pound Santa (which seems
ludicrously slim) 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.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
There are approximately two billion children (persons under 18) in
the world. However, since Santa 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, that comes to
108 million homes, presuming that there is at least one 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 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 a good child, Santa has around 1/1000th of a second to park the
sleigh, hop out, jump 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 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 that Santa's sleigh is
moving at 650 miles per second--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 could pull ten 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). 600,000 tons traveling 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. 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 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 m.p.s. in .001 seconds, would be subjected to
acceleration forces of 17,500 g's. A 250 pound Santa (which seems
ludicrously slim) 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.
