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kingandyOne of the emails that seems to do the rounds at this time of year is the one claiming that Santa's annual trip is fatal to him.
I find fault with that logic. First it presents the fact that a reindeer cannot move at such a speed and then it calculates that a reindeer moving at that speed must die. The logical conclusion from the first fact is that a reindeer that IS moving at such a speed must have some form of external propulsion, which proves the second statement irrelevant - a natural extrapolation from this conclusion is that anyone who has the technology to propel anything at those speeds is likely capable of including some facility to protect the passengers or the technology becomes useless and would not be used. A similar reasoning process can be applied to the end conclusion; given that Santa has the facility to process a house in 1/1000th of a second and move at such astronomical speeds it is unreasonable to assume that he would be crushed by the force of acceleration. A more interesting calculation would be one determining the amount of relativistic distortion produced by moving at such a speed (assuming that Santa maintains a constant speed even while negotiating the chimney and distributing gifts, which seems reasonable given that he can do it so quickly).
The only logical conclusion is, of course, robot elves.
There are approximately two billion children (persons under 13 in the world). However, since Santa does not visit children of Muslim, Hindu, Jewish or Buddhist religions (except maybe in Japan), 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 1/1000th of a second to park the sleigh, hop out, jump down the chimney, fill the stocking, distribute the 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 purpose 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 and meal breaks. This means that Santa's sleigh is moving at 650 miles per second or 3000 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) at 15 miles per hour.
The payload of the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming each child gets nothing more than a medium-sized Lego set (two pounds) the sleigh is carrying over 500,000 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 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) by another 54,000 tons, or roughly seven times the weight of the Queen Elizabeth (the ship, not the monarch).
A mass of nearly 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 about 14.3 quintillion joules of energy per second each. They would burst into flames instantaneously, exposing the reindeer behind them and creating deafening sonic booms in their wake.
The entire reindeer team would vaporise in 4.26 thousands of a second, or right about the time Santa reaches the fifth house on his trip.
Not that it matters, however, since Santa, as a result of accelerating from a dead stop to 650 mps in 0.001 seconds, would be subject to acceleration forces of 17,000g.
A 250 pound Santa (which seems ludicrously slim considering all the high-calorie snacks he must have consumed over the years) would be pinned to the back of the sleigh by 4.3 million pounds of force, instantly crushing him to a quivering blob of pink goo.
Therefore, if Santa did exist, he's dead now. ;o(
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 1/1000th of a second to park the sleigh, hop out, jump down the chimney, fill the stocking, distribute the 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 purpose 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 and meal breaks. This means that Santa's sleigh is moving at 650 miles per second or 3000 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) at 15 miles per hour.
The payload of the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming each child gets nothing more than a medium-sized Lego set (two pounds) the sleigh is carrying over 500,000 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 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) by another 54,000 tons, or roughly seven times the weight of the Queen Elizabeth (the ship, not the monarch).
A mass of nearly 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 about 14.3 quintillion joules of energy per second each. They would burst into flames instantaneously, exposing the reindeer behind them and creating deafening sonic booms in their wake.
The entire reindeer team would vaporise in 4.26 thousands of a second, or right about the time Santa reaches the fifth house on his trip.
Not that it matters, however, since Santa, as a result of accelerating from a dead stop to 650 mps in 0.001 seconds, would be subject to acceleration forces of 17,000g.
A 250 pound Santa (which seems ludicrously slim considering all the high-calorie snacks he must have consumed over the years) would be pinned to the back of the sleigh by 4.3 million pounds of force, instantly crushing him to a quivering blob of pink goo.
Therefore, if Santa did exist, he's dead now. ;o(
I find fault with that logic. First it presents the fact that a reindeer cannot move at such a speed and then it calculates that a reindeer moving at that speed must die. The logical conclusion from the first fact is that a reindeer that IS moving at such a speed must have some form of external propulsion, which proves the second statement irrelevant - a natural extrapolation from this conclusion is that anyone who has the technology to propel anything at those speeds is likely capable of including some facility to protect the passengers or the technology becomes useless and would not be used. A similar reasoning process can be applied to the end conclusion; given that Santa has the facility to process a house in 1/1000th of a second and move at such astronomical speeds it is unreasonable to assume that he would be crushed by the force of acceleration. A more interesting calculation would be one determining the amount of relativistic distortion produced by moving at such a speed (assuming that Santa maintains a constant speed even while negotiating the chimney and distributing gifts, which seems reasonable given that he can do it so quickly).
The only logical conclusion is, of course, robot elves.
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no subject
Date: 2003-12-11 01:15 am (UTC)Hell, if you're really interested I can forward you a copy of the email...
I found the email most amusing
Date: 2003-12-11 02:17 am (UTC)My parents could have tried the "he's magic" line but I don't really believe in magic (just undiscovered science) so they didn't.
Of course, I still pretend Santa exists to kids because I think it is a nice idea for kids to believe in until they are old enough to have better reasons for being good than gaining pressies at Xmas. Besides, shattering the illusions of a child is rather harsh; I think children grow up far too fast these days - my niece is only 10 and already wears make-up and thinks about boys!!!