[Gatesedge] FW: Engineers Take the Fun out of Christmas...

[Carolyn Young]

Yet again off topic, but not out of season.
Enjoy.

Caitlin

Carolyn Young
MIS Department
Goodman Mfg.
713.861.2500  ext 425


-----Original Message-----
Subject: Engineers Take the Fun out of Christmas...


 Share with children at your own risk!

 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).  Assuming an
 average (census) rate of 3.5 children per household, that computes 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 1/1000th 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.  This
 amounts to 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 pokey 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 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). 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 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 once exist, he and his reindeer team are now
 dead.

 Merry Christmas, everybody!!!!!

 Your concerned engineer friend