| IT'S RERUN SEASON Everyone else is into reruns, so why not us? Here's an entry from the first year we had this blog, 2004. Some of you have been around that long, but others haven't. SANTA CLAUS - AN EXPOSE (I don't know who wrote this, but it was someone darn clever. Some figures are probably outdated.) No Known species of reindeer can fly But there are over 300,000 species of living organisms yet to be classified. While most of these unclassified species are insects and germs, it does not completely rule out flying reindeer. There are 2 billion children in the world But since Santa doesn't appear to handle Muslim, Hindu, Jewish and Buddhist children, his workload is reduced to 15% of the total - approximately 378 million according to the Population Reference Bureau. At an average rate of 3.5 children per household, that's 91.8 million homes. One presumes there's at least one good child in each. Santa has 31 hours of Christmas to work with This is due to the different time zones and the rotation of the earth, assuming he travels east to west (which seems logical). This works out to 822.6 visits per second. So for each Christian household with good children, Santa has .001 second to park, hop out of the sleigh, jump down the chimney, fill the stockings, distribute the remaining presents under the tree, eat whatever snacks have been left, get back up the chimney, get back into the sleigh and move on to the next house. Assuming these 91.8 million stops are evenly distributed around the earth (which, of course, we know to be false but for the purposes of our calculations we will accept), it is about .78 miles per household - a total trip of 75.5 million miles. This calculation does not factor in stops for rest, feeding, or what most of us must do at least once every 31 hours. Thus, considering the previous data, Santa's sleigh travels at approxmimately 650 miles per second - that is 3,000 times the speed of sound. For comparison purposes, the fastest manmade vehicle on earth, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a pokey 27.4 miles per second. A conventional reindeer can run, tops, at 15 miles per hour. The payload on the sleigh adds another interesting element Assuming that each child gets nothing more than a medium-sized Lego set (2 lbs.), Santa’s sleigh would be hauling about 321,300 tons. This does not factor Santa, who is invariably described as overweight. On land, conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 lbs. Even granting that "flying reindeer" could pull ten times the normal amount, the job cannot be done with eight or even nine reindeer. Santa would need 214,200 reindeer. This increases the payload - not counting the weight of the sleigh - to 353,430 tons. For comparison purposes, that is four times the weight of the ocean liner Queen Elizabeth. 353,000 tons traveling at 650 miles per second creates enormous resistance. This will heat the reindeer up in the same fashion as a space craft re-entering the earth’s atmosphere. The lead pair of reindeer would each absorb 14.3 quintillion joules of energy per second. In short, they would burst into flame almost instantaneously, exposing the reindeer behind them, and creating deafening sonic booms in their wake. The entire reindeer team would be vaporized within .00426 of a second. Meanwhile, Santa would be subjected to centrifugal forces 17,500.06 times greater than gravity. A 250-lb. Santa would be pinned to the back of his sleigh by 4,315,015 lbs. of force. Conclusion: If Santa ever did deliver presents on Christmas Eve, he’s dead now. |
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