2002-12-19 John,
Please reread the Santa story below and note the changes. In addition to metricating the story, I corrected some other errors. Santa Claus does not have an "e" at the end of Claus. I changed centrifugal forces to g-forces at the end. You may wish to check the edits for correctness, but please realise I tried to round to rational numbers to make SI look more comprehensible. If you like the update, pass it back to whoever sent it to you and pass it on to everyone on your list. And remember, if some one complains about the use of SI, tell them the north Pole is in metric territory and NASA now uses metric. Even the all non-American children on Santa's list are in metric countries, and they form the majority. The majority rules. It will be interesting to see if this version circulates as much as the other is. John Is there a Santa? A little girl named Virginia asked the New York Times if there was a Santa Claus. The reply is now famous. Someone thought it would be fun to ask the scientists at NASA the same question. Here is their reply: 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 seen. There are 2 000 000 000 children (under 18) in the world. But since Santa doesn't appear to handle Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist and Jewish children, that reduces the workload to15 % of the total - 138 000 000 or so. At an average rate of 3.5 children per household, that's 91 800 000 homes. One presumes there is at least one good child in each. Santa has 31 h of Christmas to work with, thanks to time zones and the rotation of the earth, assuming he travels east to west. This works out to 822.6 visits per second. This is to say that for each household with good children, Santa has 1 ms to park, hop out of the sleigh, jump down the chimney, fill the stockings, distribute the remaining gifts under the tree, eat snacks, get back up the chimney, get back into the sleigh, and move to the next house. Assuming that each of these 91 800 000 houses are distributed evenly (which we know to be false but for the sake of these calculations we will accept) we are now talking about 1.25 km per household, a total trip of 121.5 Gm (gigametres), not counting bathroom stops. This means that Santa's sleigh is travelling at 1000 km/s (kilometres per second), 3000 times the speed of sound. For comparison, the fastest man made vehicle, the Ulysses space probe moves at a poky 44 km/s. The average reindeer runs at 25 km/h (7 m/s). The sleigh's payload adds another interesting element. Assuming that each child gets nothing more than a medium sized Lego set (1 kg), the sleigh is carrying 300 Gg (gigagrams), not counting Santa, who is invariably described as overweight. On land, conventional reindeer can pull no more than 150 kg. Even granting that "flying reindeer" (see first paragraph) could pull TEN TIMES the usual amount, we cannot do the job with 8 or even 9. We need 214 000 reindeer. This increases the weight, not even counting the sleigh, to 350 Gg. Again, for comparison this is 4 times the weight of the British liner Queen Elizabeth II. 350 Gg travelling at 1000 km/s creates an enormous air resistance. This will heat the reindeer in the same manner as a spacecraft re-entering the earth's atmosphere. The lead pair of reindeer will absorb 14.3 EW (exawatts) EACH. In short, they will burst in flame almost instantaneously, exposing the next pair of reindeer, and creating deafening sonic booms in their wake. The entire team will be vaporized within 4.26 ms. Santa, meanwhile, will be subjected to g-forces 17 500.06 times the force due to gravity. A 150 kg Santa would be pinned to the back of his sleigh by 19.25 MN (meganewtons) of force. CONCLUSION: There was a Santa, but he's dead now. John Nichols BE, Ph.D. (Newcastle), MIE (Aust), Chartered Professional > Engineer > Assistant Professor > Texas A&M University > Department of Construction Science > Langford AC > Rm: A414 MD 3137 > College Station, TX 77843-3137 > > Electronic mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Telephone: 979 845 6541 > Facsimile: 979 862 1572 > ----------------------------------------------------------------- > a fronte praecipitium a tergo lupi > > in front a precipice, behind a wolf > ----------------------------------------------------------------- > >
