Santa Minutia
- To: Pumpkin Mailing List <pumpkins@mallorn.com>
- Subject: Santa Minutia
- From: n*@ideasign.com (Chris R Wilbers)
- Date: Sat, 20 Dec 1997 00:11:53 -0600
As a group who glories in minute analytical detail of an obscure hobby,
I thought the rest of you might enjoy this as much as I did. Do not
criticize me for the calculations, this is second had information :-)
--
Santa Claus
An Engineer*,s Perspective
1. 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 household, that
comes to 108 million homes, presuming that there is at least one
*&good*8 child in each.
2. 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 calculates 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 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 that 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.
3. The payload of the sleigh adds another interesting element.
Assuming 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*8
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).
4. 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. In short, they would burst into flames almost
instantaneously, exposing the reindeer behind them and creating
deafening sonic booms in their wake. The entire team of reindeer
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 .001
seconds, would be subjected to centrifugal forces of 17,500 G*,s.
A 250 pound Santa (which seems ludricously 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.
5. Therefore, if Santa did exist, he*,s dead now.
--
Holiday regards,
Chris Wilbers
Sioux Falls, SD
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