This has been doing the rounds for a while, but some here might not have
seen it...
"Santa and Science"
1) No known species of reindeer can fly. But there are 300,000 species of
living organisms yet to be classified, and while most of these are
insects and
germs, this does not completely rule out flying reindeer, which only
Santa has
ever seen.
2) There are 2 billion children in the world (persons under 18). But
since Santa doesn't (appear to) handle Muslim, Hindu, Jewish, or Buddhist
children, that reduces the workload by 85% of the total-- leaving 378
million
according to the Population Reference Bureau. At an average (census)
rate of 3.5
children per household, that's 91.8 million homes. One presumes there is
at
least one good child per house.
3) Santa has 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 works out to 822.6 visits per second.
This is to say that for each Christian household with good children, Santa
has 1/1000th of a second to park, hop out of the sleigh, jump down the
chimney,
fill the stocking, distribute the remaining presents under the tree, eat
whatever snacks have been left, get back up the chimney, get back into
the sleigh
and move on to the next house.
4) Assuming that each of these 91.8 million stops are evenly distributed
around the earth (which, of course, we know to be false but for the
purposes of
our calculations we will accept), we are now talking about
0.78 miles per household, a total trip of 75.5 million miles, not counting
stops to do what most of us do at least once every 31 hours, plus
feeding, etc.
That means that Santa's sleigh is moving at 650 miles per second, 3000
times
the speed of sound. For purposes of comparison, the fastest man-made
vehicle on
earth, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a poky 27.4 miles per second. A
conventional reindeer can run, at tops
25-30 miles per hour.
5) The payload on the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming
each
child gets nothing more then a medium sized LEGO set (2 lbs.), the
sleigh is
carrying 321,300 tons, not counting Santa, who is invariably described as
overweight. On land, conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300
pounds. Even
granting the "flying reindeer" can pull TEN TIMES that normal amount, we
cannot
do the job with eight, or even nine--we need 214,200 reindeer. This
increased
the payload--not even counting the weight of the sleigh--to 353,430 tons.
Again for comparison, this is four times the weight of the HMS Queen
Elizabeth.
6) Three hundred and fifty-three thousand tons travelling at 650 miles per
second creates enormous air resistance. This will heat the reindeer up
in the
same fa****on as spacecraft re-entering the earth's atmosphere.
The lead pair will absorb 14.3 QUINTILLION joules of energy per second,
each.
In short, they will burst into flames almost instantaneously, exposing the
reindeer behind them, and creating a deafening sonic boom in their wake.
The
entire reindeer team will be va****ized within 4.26 thousandths of a
second. Santa
meanwhile, will be subject to centrifugal forces of 17,500.06 times
greater
than gravity. A 250 lb. Santa (which seems ludicrously slim) would be
pinned to
the back of the sleigh by a
4,315,015 pound force.
In conclusion, if Santa ever DID deliver presents on Christmas eve, he's
now
dead.
--
Shalom/Salaam/Pax! Rowland Croucher
http://jmm.aaa.net.au/
(20,000 articles 4000 humor)
Blogs - http://rowlandsblogs.blogspot.com/
Justice for Dawn Rowan - http://dawnrowansaga.blogspot.com/
Funny Jokes and Pics - http://funnyjokesnpics.blogspot.com/
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