Something I got today



>  There are approximately two billion children (persons under 18) in the
> world.
> However, since Santa does not usually 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 household, that comes to
> 108 million homes presuming 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 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
> stocking, distribute the remaining remaining presents under the tree,
> eat whatever snacks have been left for him, get back up the chimney,
> jump into the sleigh and get onto 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, and 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 can pull 10 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 reentering the earth's atmosphere.
>
> The lead pair of reindeer would adsorb 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 17,000 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.
>
> Merry Christmas!!
>
>
> Stephen Pearson
>

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