Santa Claus:An Engineers Perspective NF

[danbouck]

Santa Claus:An Engineers Perspective

 

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.

[danbouck]

I always get a good chuckle from this one, but of course a real engineer knows that air resistance is a function of speed and surface area geometry, not mass...but I'll let that one slide.

 

I've been sending that around for 10 years, I aint changing it

[NAW]

I've read ones like this before. But this one is GREAT.

 

Just forwarded to the rest of my engineering team, and he chief engineer..

 

Last time I sent something like this to my cheif engineer, he marked it up with new calculations and loads.... :wallbash:

Edited December 19, 2012 by N.A.W

[camillj]

And dont forget that after drinking 108 million glasses of milk (and probably an equal quantity of Brandy) to wash down around 216 million shortbread cookies ... there's gonna be a SERIOUS burden placed on infrastructure ... sure hope somebody logged a call with the Works department

[spincast]

santa is obviously an angler in the off season

[bigbuck]

Santa has the ability to slow time. It is a little known secret but don't let it out.

[cheaptackle]

There's really only one logical and undeniable explanation - nobody can deny the facts - impossibilities exist but are overcome in some unfathonable fashion. I say loud and proud that the answer is:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pretty Obvious!

 

Santa is really Chuck Norris celebrating the holidays, been doing it for centuries and centuries, only recently allowed his true persona to be known (by starring in many kick butt movies) while maintaining his annual appearances as his private secret!

 

Michael

[sleepjigging]

I think the estimate on the number of GOOD children is way off.

[GBW]

when going as fast as he can/does... if he farts (or should I say, passes gas) does it make a sound and or more important; does it smell?!?!?!?

[Skipper D]

It makes a sound, he just can't hear it because the point of exit is aft, and the sound will never catch up to his ears!

 

Of course if he was riding backwards, the fart sound would be compressed to an ultrasonic frequency that only mosquitoes can hear!

 

 

Actuly Sin when manufactured the sled was designed with a hole in the center of the drivers seat to acommadate such an event , inside this hole a sparkplug is mounted which is constancely fireing , if you watch when the thing is in flight closely you will notice from time to time more so shortly after each take off a great plumb of flame shooting out its aft helping to give extra lift to the craft on take off . This is greatly magnified thru the night with Santa's ever increasing intake of eggnog .

[i2cool2fool]

Skipper, the rum adds a nice blue hue.

[i2cool2fool]

Well bring on the blue but more inportantly the eggnog mix.

[vance]

The interesting things you learn on a fishing web site

 

 

 

vance