Got this from an other mailing list. Hilarious! :-)
Santa Claus - An Engineer's Perspective
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I. No known species of reindeer can fly. However, there are some 300,000
species of living organisms yet to be classified. While most of these are
insects and germs, this does not completely rule out flying reindeer (which
only Santa has ever seen).
II. 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 house hold, that
comes to 108 million homes, presuming that there is at least one good child
in each.
III. 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 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 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 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.
IV. 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
who is invariably described as overweight. On land, a conventional reindeer
can pull no more than 300 pounds. Even granting that the "flying" 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).
V. 600,000 tons traveling at 650 miles per second crates 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.
Santa, meanwhile, would be subjected to centrifugal forces 17,500 times
greater than gravity. A 250 pound Santa (which seems ludicrously slim)
would be pinned to the back of the sleigh by 4,315,015 pounds of force.
VI. In conclusion, if Santa ever did deliver presents to all the good
children on Christmas Eve, HE'S DEAD NOW.
Happy Holidays!
Jeroen
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