THIS = great
Posted: Thu Nov 24, 2005 7:49 am
Why Santa Claus Don't Exist
I. There is 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 household,
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 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 accelerating 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.
V. Therefore, if Santa did exist, he's dead now
I. There is 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 household,
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 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 accelerating 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.
V. Therefore, if Santa did exist, he's dead now
wow 
lol 