Santa Claus:An Engineers Perspective

[danbouck]

I. 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 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 house hold, that comes to 108 million homes, presuming that there is at least one good child in each.

 

II. 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 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.

 

III. 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).

 

IV. 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 accellerating from a dead stop to 650 m.p.s. in .001 seconds, would be subjected to centrifugal 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.

[irishfield]

Gee thanks Dan... you've ruined it for me know. Guess I'll go talk to the wife and tell her I now know that Santa's not for real. She'll have to use the other wrapping paper this year for my gift I guess...

Edited December 17, 2008 by irishfield

[drwxr]

well this year is gonna be different

http://break.com/index/a-recession-christmas.html

Edited December 17, 2008 by efka

[BassAsin]

thanks dan, i hope theres no 11 or 12 year old kids on here, even at 21 its kinda heartbreaking!

[fishindevil]

Well i think the enginers are wrong cause santa has found a way to beat all those odds !!!!...im all upst now,that nobody believes in santa clause anymore.... LOL..LOL..

[Ramble]

i didnt see christmas MAGIC factored in to all of that number crunching! Or what it if Santa has multiple twins....or if there are many Santa's after all their are many different names for him.

 

Typical bunch of number crunching, formula fiddling engineers lol ... always trying to "fit" things into a "box" that cant be fit into a box.

 

Santa will live on with or with the blessing of the engineers!

 

-R-

[HTHM]

Bah Humbug!

To quote the former dean of engineering at MacMaster, the three rules of engineering are:

1) Feces flows downhill

2) F=MA

3) Payday is every second Thursday.

Edited December 17, 2008 by hometownhandyman

[vance]

A few years ago my friend who works for an an airplane manufacturer said the engineers spent countless hours of their spare time to prove without a doubt that BEES CAN'T FLY.Therefore as far as I am concerned neither of you know anything about what you are saying.

[crappieperchhunter]

I know for a FACT Santa exists. I see him every morning in the local Timmies have a double double with Elvis.

[bigugli]

We choose to believe, or not, in the spirit and magic of Christmas. This jolly elf believes in Santa Claus/ Joulupukki. Some children always wonder when they see me but I never claim to be the "one".

Having said that I manage to find toys for dozens of area children. Once produced 1000 Christmas colouring books to give away. Delivered numerous fishing rods quietly on Christmas eve from Santa.

 

The magic is for the little ones and they will find disenchantment soon enough. Until then I will do my part to keep it alive for their sakes.

[Craig]

It's kinda like the Da Vinci Code. There is a secret society of Santas, many of them scattered around the world doing the work....

Maybe even in every city.....

[kemper]

Where is douG, he is the resident rocket dude

[Roy]

Where is douG, he is the resident rocket dude

 

Building toys for his boss.

[blaque]

Engineers Holiday Specifications

 

Sorry didnt work

Edited December 17, 2008 by Blaque

[douG]

Well, off the top of my head I can pretty much say for sure that only Santa is Santa.

 

On the other hand, maybe there is a little Santa in each of us. Mine is a creepy little snot about 2 inches tall that gives me the farts at the worst time. Jerk.

[Twocoda]

Well, off the top of my head I can pretty much say for sure that only Santa is Santa.

 

On the other hand, maybe there is a little Santa in each of us. Mine is a creepy little snot about 2 inches tall that gives me the farts at the worst time. Jerk.

 

 

Im actually scared to ask ...lmao

[Fisherman]

The last thing I'd be worried about is Santa getting squished in the back of the sleigh by the tremendous force of acceleration, I'd be more worried about them reindeer turds on blastoff.

[Twocoda]

The whole engineer thing doesnt make sense cuz how would Rudolph and the rest of the reindeer hear Sants call out to them ??? if he was going 3000 times the speed of sound....

[Bernie]

Lions Clubs in our area raise funds through telethons and local fundraisers throughout the year. When delivering the turkey, the food vouchers and baskets of toys for the children the smiles on the faces of the less fortunate make the time spent working throughout the year all worthwhile.

So Santa does do his deeds through us all in some way.

[bigugli]

Lions Clubs in our area raise funds through telethons and local fundraisers throughout the year. When delivering the turkey, the food vouchers and baskets of toys for the children the smiles on the faces of the less fortunate make the time spent working throughout the year all worthwhile.

So Santa does do his deeds through us all in some way.

 

Area Lions are busy helping community care package Christmas for 320 families this season.

[HTHM]

The whole engineer thing doesnt make sense cuz how would Rudolph and the rest of the reindeer hear Sants call out to them ??? if he was going 3000 times the speed of sound....

Simple, at that speed the commands would be left behind in the slipstream, and the reindeer would catch up to the sound waves and hear the commands on the next rotation.....or something like that

[packrat]

I hate to burst the bubble on all fans of Rudolph (trnr) but he is neither a genetic freak or under the affluence of inkahol.

 

As lead reindeer he takes the "heat" from travelling that fast and THAT is what lights up his shnozz being the most forward portion of his anatomy.

 

 

 

 

 

I think

[HTHM]

I hate to burst the bubble on all fans of Rudolph (trnr) but he is neither a genetic freak or under the affluence of inkahol.

 

As lead reindeer he takes the "heat" from travelling that fast and THAT is what lights up his shnozz being the most forward portion of his anatomy.

I think

Oh fine....be logical!

[Terry]

and all the other reindeer noses are brown because Rudolph can stop quicker then the rest

[packrat]