Monday, December 19, 2005 - 06:56 am, by: Stephen Hille(9zero)
OK, it's an old one but I still think it's pretty funny
There are approximately two billion children (persons under eighteen) 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 population references). Assuming an average (census) rate of 3.5 children per household, this computes 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 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. This amounts to a total trip of 75.5 million miles, not counting bathroom stops or breaks. Therefore, 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 pokey 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 thousands 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 travelling 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 miles per second in 0.001 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.
Monday, December 19, 2005 - 08:21 am, by: Tim Eacott(Timme)
But what if there were more then one santa?? it's a big business he would have other people dressed up working for him while he sits back in his office drinking a Hot coffee.
Monday, December 19, 2005 - 10:28 am, by: David Vaughan(Davidv)
In the light of other efforts to meld the facts with the fantasy elsewhere on the list, I offer the following riposte (in a similar vein) to the analysis quoted by Stephen above
Santa Phoenix I have read the paper "SANTA.HTML" and believe that the author's conclusions conflict with the evidence that children receive presents at Christmas. One must therefore find an explanation for Santa's ability to carry out his task without immolating in the year 1AD (presumably the first Christmas; I assume Santa did not wait for theologians to agree it was worth a bit of a party).
I think we must pay attention to some well known facts about Santa. First, he dresses entirely in red. Might this not be a heat shield? Proof of this, if any more were needed, comes from the fact that he has a red-nosed reindeer! Clearly, Santa has equipped his leading point with a heat shield which sets up a bow shock wave which protects the remainder of the team. Santa's own suit is a safety backup system and is recognisably padded against acceleration.
How much acceleration? Well, if (from the previous paper) Santa has 1.2 milliseconds at each house then logistically he will spend most of his time unloading and stacking presents, drinking beer, eating biscuits and I will not go into the more salacious rumours; given the time available sex could hardly be a very satisfying experience anyway. The time taken for unloading being, say, one millisecond which leaves him 200 microseconds to move on to the next house. Assuming he optimally accelerates to a peak speed and decelerates to the next house with no cruise time, then his peak speed to travel about 1.25km in 200uS will be 15,000 kilometres per second, or 5% of the speed of light.
At this point one must necessarily think about relativistic effects, one of which is foreshortening in the direction of travel of a body travelling at that relative speed. One of Santa's elves had observed this foreshortening in Santa's pilot runs. Not being acquainted with Einstein until fairly recently, Santa had no theory on which to make precise adjustments and so had to take an empirical approach to the problem. Since he sits in his sleigh, the relevant direction of travel is stomach-forward, so he gained sufficient weight to avoid being foreshortened out of existence. So obvious when you see it.
A further effect of course is time dilation. At Santa's peak speed, time will pass more slowly for him than for the people he is visiting. If he sets out to do the work in 31 hours then more than 31 hours will pass for us (time travelling faster for us) so he had better speed up a bit, which will increase the effect. Ultimately, he will from his own point of view successfully deliver the presents in the requisite time, but will appear to us to take infinitely long. This is why we never see him arrive.
In this paper I have entirely explained all known facts about Santa, including his successful delivery of presents without manifesting himself and without hypothesising thousands of reindeer for which there is no evidence. The question of multiple Santas I leave as an exercise for the interested reader.
Monday, December 19, 2005 - 11:22 am, by: Alan Carter(Alky)
Well there goes my Christmas. Thanks guys. Looks like I won't bother writing to Santa next Christmas - unless it's to ask him for a flamethrower to toast all you naysayers and ne'r-do-wells
Monday, December 19, 2005 - 12:04 pm, by: Dragan Vidic(Soarer_ttt)
David Vaughan wrote on Monday, December 19, 2005 - 10:28 am:
One must therefore find an explanation for Santa's ability to carry out his task without immolating in the year 1AD (presumably the first Christmas; I assume Santa did not wait for theologians to agree it was worth a bit of a party).
santa was created by coca cola in 1939 as an advertising symbol....he has nothing to do with christmas wot so ever
Monday, December 19, 2005 - 01:48 pm, by: David Vaughan(Davidv)
Well, my post, like Stephen's, was intended only to amuse. However, if you two want to assert Santa's true origins over a bit of whimsy, you had really better do your research: http://www.snopes.com/cokelore/santa.asp
Monday, December 19, 2005 - 03:09 pm, by: Benny Gammelmark(Oldfield)
Santa works on a different time scale. For him 1/1000 of a second is like a whole day. It's just like God and how he listens to prayers. They are actually in the same union.
I heard that Odin and Thor was kicked out of the union because noone believed in them any more.
Monday, December 19, 2005 - 03:36 pm, by: Dragan Vidic(Soarer_ttt)
i know wot it was supposed to do and that it did
however I was well aware of St Nicolas before •• post David just couldnt be bothered explaining and going through the whole thing wen i said that "santa was created by coca cola in 1939 as an advertising symbol".... my point tho was that he had nothing to do with Christmas and he doesnt
Don Bagnall Moderator New Zealand 1991 UZZ30 GT4.0 V8
Tuesday, December 20, 2005 - 02:44 am, by: Katrina Bruns(Katrina)
Being the Santa myth was busted.. good thing I already volunteered to fill my kids stocking for Santa this year LOL .. When I was 6 and saw my dad fill the stockings.. well dumb Santa is a no-go on reality.. but I still take my kids to see the old guy in the mall every year LOL
Tom Kneebone Tinkerer WA factory 5 spd TT : Auto TT
Tuesday, December 20, 2005 - 10:56 pm, by: Tom Kneebone(Tomk)
Santa travels with the speed of thought. He is every where in the minds of people at this time of year. He prays on the nature of people wanting to feel good by making others happy and uses this as his method of distribution of presents by proxy. He does not need to travel other than for the occasional promotional run so he can be seen thus ensuring his existence doesn't become forgotten and his annual control over us does not slip. Evidence? On christmas people everywhere are giving more than they usually do and there is a festive atmosphere all around. what else could this be other than some form of benevolent mind control?? Modern Santa knows the power of delegation.
Thursday, December 22, 2005 - 02:47 am, by: Katrina Bruns(Katrina)
Well, I believed in Santa till I caught my dad and grandpa in 2 yrs filling my stalking.. I let it slip one yr being I thought Santa was sick and needed a break.. but now I know Santa's other name in a house .. MOM
Previous
sad isn't it...
