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.

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Waaaaaaaaaahhhhhh! :(

Who?s gonna feed the peguins back at the North Pole?

Santa Claus:An Engineers Perspective

Therefore, if Santa did exist, he's dead now.

Going on subject.. Damn it..

Santa is magic, and does not conform to your gravity, acceleration or time "rules".

Santa Lives. Santa can STOP time, and take as long as he damn well pleases to bring you your lump of coal..

Deal with it!....

;-)

(BTW.. Never told my kids the Santa story. They are 7 and 5 and have never belived in any magical creatures that give you gifts or pay you for your teeth.)

porky pig style: thats all folks

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why do cars blow up instantly in the movies and not in real life?

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Waaaaaaaaaahhhhhh! :(

Who?s gonna feed the peguins back at the North Pole?

Santa Claus:An Engineers Perspective

Therefore, if Santa did exist, he's dead now.

> Coming from the "Land Down Under" I am sorry to disappoint you, but Penguins are native to the Southern Hemisphere and none of them live at the South Pole (far to cold), let alone the North Pole. You appear to have confused Polar Bears or Seals with Penguins.
And one other thing with no land at the North Pole, Santa Claus would have to be very careful about how things are heated, he might melt through the ice and his workshop sink under many metres of very cold water.

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> Coming from the "Land Down Under" I am sorry to disappoint you, but Penguins are native to the Southern Hemisphere...

Waaaaaaaaaahhhhhh! :(

Who?s gonna feed the peguins back at the North Pole?

Agreed. I was being facetious, merely adding on to the Engineers Perspective. Santa is frequently pictured with penguins at the North Pole. What is wrong with this picture, kiddies?

Hug a penguin for me the next time you come across one!

Oooops, am I suddenly on-topic?!

I'm amused by the recipes that are provided on packages of food here. It seems that all one has to do to turn a "normal" food into a "Mexican" food is add some flavor to it...

[Yes, Pengy, this thread has become on-topic. Please restrain yourselves ;-) ]

Just for the heck of it, I'll wear my penguin suit before I go hug a penguin.

I read awhile back Kraft foods was getting sued for the lack of avocado in its guacamole. Hows that for a lawsuit.

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No guacamole!...That's an outrage!...I think i'll have some spam for lunch.

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go read the blog that is linked off of the "you got to read it to believe it" post in the cafe.

the discussion is over .002 cents vs .002 dollars per kb.

its rather interesting.

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Mountain Dew = Instant Caffeine Addiction

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on topic for a moment

don't drink it if its warm and in back of a semi truck - mt dew or mellow yellow

off topic

is the world truely round or is it somewhat egg shaped?

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If you are afflicted with agoraphobia...These giant message boxes will likely cause you problems.

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I thought I lived in the Chicago Area...

Just looked outside.. I was wrong, must be the San Fran Bay...

It's "pea soup" style foggy out side....

Is it green? Thats a heck of alot of soup.

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Ugh. I got distracted by my own life. I much prefer Rosetta.

anyone up for a BLT with tabasco?

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My wife is pregnant with our third child. Found out this morning.
:-)

Get out the pickles and the ice cream! You got 9 months to score some good cigars.

The world will end in _______ years

Play the polar bear game, click on the penguin for him to jump and then click on the Yeda to make him swing, objective is to get more than 300ft on the penguin.

http://n.ethz.ch/student/mkos/pinguin.swf

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