Your correspondent is making the mistake that engineers and scientists the
world over make all too frequently. He is neglecting to include the effect
of magic in his otherwise completely sound calculations. Santa is magic.
Therefore he can do it, just like he did last year! QED.
Merry Christmas and thanks to all.
:)

Richard.

-----Original Message-----
From: Justin Grimm [mailto:Justin.Grimm@SOUTHCORP.COM.AU]
Sent: Tuesday, December 17, 2002 10:47 AM
To: PICLIST@MITVMA.MIT.EDU
Subject: [OT]: Santa Sense


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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