Christmas in an Engineer's Mind

[BoomBox-Creations]

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 (except maybe in Japan) 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 1/1000 th 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; 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.


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 he 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 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 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 X-Mas everyone =D

[palmertech]

If this WERE actually yours, here is a huge problem: Not only Christians "believe" in Santa. St. Nick did exist, but the modern concept of Santa being preached as a real, living figure is universal, with most people telling their children about Santa, be they Muslim, Jewish, Catholic, whatever. There are some people who strongly practice their religion that do not do this, but of all the people who do, most are Christians (Who may get offended that "their" holiday has been taken over by a fat man in a red suit).

Also, this is not yours, you posted posted it verbatim word-for-word from some guys blog.

One more thing: Christmas was 3 days ago. Fix your calendar, I think you have it three days slow.

[gamemasterAS]

also this was posted here before

[vskid]

One more thing: Christmas was 3 days ago. Fix your calendar, I think you have it three days slow.

4 days, he lives in Australia, where its tomorrow by now.

Thank you for copying and pasting something about a guy that everyone ages 10 and up knows doesn't exist. If he was real, I wouldn't want to accept gifts from a jerk that gives crap/nothing to poor kids and awesome stuff to rich kids.

[Triton]

lol now that christmas is over everybody is back to being @$$holes its still a fun read regardless

[timmeh87]

If this WERE actually yours, here is a huge problem: Not only Christians "believe" in Santa. St. Nick did exist, but the modern concept of Santa being preached as a real, living figure is universal, with most people telling their children about Santa, be they Muslim, Jewish, Catholic, whatever. There are some people who strongly practice their religion that do not do this, but of all the people who do, most are Christians (Who may get offended that "their" holiday has been taken over by a fat man in a red suit).

Also, this is not yours, you posted posted it verbatim word-for-word from some guys blog.

One more thing: Christmas was 3 days ago. Fix your calendar, I think you have it three days slow.

This is not from some guys blog either, it has circulated in chain mail and such since the internet was just text.

It is just a humorous 'scientific' breakdown that really proves nothing. It is intended to give a good laugh to people who already know that gifts dont magically appear under the tree.

Keep in mind that the 'santa claus' was are discussing was NOT a real person, he is more of a marketing invention used by Coca-Cola and other corporations. He is a hollow representation of the real St. Nick.

Of course st. Nick existed, as did pretty well all of the other saints and Jesus.

Its good to be reminded of some of the 'true meaning' of Christmas, but in the spirit of the season, try not to sound so confrontational .

cheers.