Paranoid Marvin Posted November 24, 2007 Share Posted November 24, 2007 I guess it's the time of year to bring this old cookie up again Santa Claus: An Engineers Perspective I. 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. II. 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. III. 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 himself. 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). IV. 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 accellerating from a dead stop to 650 m.p.s. in .001 seconds, would be subjected to centrifugal forces of 17,500 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 exist, he's dead now. http://www.engineeringedu.com/Santa.html Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ayanami Posted November 24, 2007 Share Posted November 24, 2007 Why would the blob of pink goo be quivering? EDIT: Why would it even be pink? Wouldn't it be red? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
U.C. Posted November 24, 2007 Share Posted November 24, 2007 More Maroon I think, coz as soon as blood is exposed to air it turns Maroon-Brown. But then again the white bones could affect the color. Then we also have the other organs and other bodily fluids such as Bile, Stomach Acids and other Juices. I think I will go with Maroon Getting back to topic, old but still good Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ayanami Posted November 24, 2007 Share Posted November 24, 2007 Mmmm....Juicy Funny, I started reading that while watching The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause. Terrible movie. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thegodfaza Posted November 24, 2007 Share Posted November 24, 2007 OMG, this is the funniest thing I have read all day. Thank you for this, and all the people I am going to forward this to will thank you. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paranoid Marvin Posted November 24, 2007 Author Share Posted November 24, 2007 More Maroon I think, coz as soon as blood is exposed to air it turns Maroon-Brown. But then again the white bones could affect the color. Then we also have the other organs and other bodily fluids such as Bile, Stomach Acids and other Juices. I think I will go with Maroon How much thought did you put into that? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SDRacer48 Posted November 24, 2007 Share Posted November 24, 2007 That is one of the best things I have ever read.... :hysterical: :hysterical: :hysterical: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alloutmacstoday Posted November 24, 2007 Share Posted November 24, 2007 i lawl'd :D Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GBK.Xscape Posted November 25, 2007 Share Posted November 25, 2007 hah hilarious, being in AP Calculus and Physics actually makes this good... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
microsoft whiz Posted November 26, 2007 Share Posted November 26, 2007 definitely gonna forward this Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bxsci(macuser) Posted November 26, 2007 Share Posted November 26, 2007 this is definitely going on some board somewhere in my school Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sabr Posted November 28, 2007 Share Posted November 28, 2007 Nice find. Made me chuckle. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Universe_JDJ Posted December 1, 2007 Share Posted December 1, 2007 Very funny Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
(MoC) Posted December 2, 2007 Share Posted December 2, 2007 Everyone knows it is humanly impossible. I always critisize things through an engineering perspective! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Megnus Posted December 14, 2007 Share Posted December 14, 2007 Ahh. .so that's why we can't see him. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kalle_19 Posted December 14, 2007 Share Posted December 14, 2007 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. A small correction: The fastest man-made Object was the Helios 2 solar probe which had a top speed of ~43,632685 mile/sec. Quite funny anyhow Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
(MoC) Posted December 14, 2007 Share Posted December 14, 2007 l0l Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Torqu3 Posted December 14, 2007 Share Posted December 14, 2007 ... It can't be true! It can't be! No Nice post, I found it hilarious. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fatshitcat Posted December 18, 2007 Share Posted December 18, 2007 Haha, gotta give this for my physics teacher... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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