| SANTA | |
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Yippy - Student  |
This was sent to me by a friend: WHY SANTA DOES NOT EXIST 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 1.26 km per household; a total trip of 121.5 million km, not counting bathroom stops or breaks. This means Santa's sleigh is moving at 1046 km per second -- 3,000 times the speed of sound (0.35% speed of light). Relativistic effects would also slightly reduce his available time, as time would be moving faster on Earth than for him. For purposes of comparison, the fastest man made vehicle, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a poky 40 km per second, and a conventional reindeer can run at 24 km per hour. The payload of the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming that each child gets nothing more than a medium sized LEGO set (1 kg), the sleigh is carrying over 500 thousand tons, not counting Santa himself. On land, a conventional reindeer can pull no more than 136 kg. 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 to roughly seven times the weight of the Queen Elizabeth (the ship, not the monarch). 600,000 tons travelling at 1046 km 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 adsorb 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 1046 km/s in .001 seconds, would be subjected to acceleration forces of 17,000 g's. A 115 kg Santa (which seems ludicrously slim) would be pinned to the back of the sleigh by 1,927,257 kg 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. _______________ (\_/) (0.0) (> <  This is Bunny. Copy Bunny and this message into your signature to help him on his way to world Domination. |
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Jacen Aratan - Student |
'Tis true, though.. I saw a professor at Århus University (pretty much one of the smartest people in Denmark) prove it on teevee... was sick.  A little counter for it, though (if you can read Norwegian): http://www.vg.no/pub/vgart.hbs?artid=259673  |
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Monteeeeeee - Nugget 
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ROFL that made me laugh  _______________ If you add me to MSN, tell me who you are
Best Movie Character EVER!! |
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solitude - Jedi Council 
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bah humbug ITS SANTA HES MAGICAL, AND HE GAVE ME PRESENTS LAST NIGHT!!! _______________ Joined 16 October 2004 | Retired 10 April 2005 | Returned 05 June 2008 | Made Staff 27 June 2008 | Made Council 18 January 2009 Padawan To Odan-Wei Belouve | Adopted into the Belouve family | Twin to xAnAtOs | Owner of the 4th Quesi sexy badge Brother To Roan Belouve, Nomad, Majno, Silkmonkey, Kensei and Jarhok Belouve
Owner Of Virtue's 1000th profile comment, Mr. Doobie's 1000th profile comment, Gradius' 2500th comment, xAnAtOs' 2500th comment, Rosered's 1500th comment, Laziana's 900th comment, Scythus' 500th comment and Echuu's 100th comment |
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Gradius - Ex-Student 
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Dude, it's Santa ffs! He's magical! He's got flying reindeer! He knows every move you make! He knows if you have been naughty or nice! If you see him on the street, he knows your name although you've never met him before! Don't you think it's at all possible that he has some other magical powers that allow him to get the job done within the time limit??? _______________ - Proud padawan of Kueller. - We really are at the beginning of it all. The trick, of course, is to make sure we never find the end. - Bill Bryson, A Short History of Nearly Everything - <gen-e-sis-happy> Liek, you can train, liek, a n00b, but he'll just be a trained n00b... --> Wise words! - "daer SOE me likes your a company i am having your some money for letting me do stuff cos mes the best amd i do it all meself" - Slider |
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