Santa and how an engineer must see him

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*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 travelling 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. *

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

Or is he not:confused:
 
Anyhow a VERY MERRY XMAS and a VERY HAPPY NEW YEAR
 
Actually, that's just the first-order approximation. Engineers with more imagination can come up with some really nice workarounds.

Of course, mine mostly ended up in the science fiction realm, but hey, when you realize that elves are actually nothing but the intersections of hyper-dimensional beings with our universe (like the mice in Douglas Adams' seminal work), you get to cheat on your frame of reference. :biggrin:
 
I don't care how the physics of Santa works as long as he shows up and puts the goodies under the tree. (I'm hoping for a new Nikon and housing)

And a Merry Christmas to all, or whatever holiday you personally celebrate. :)

John D
 
I hope he is getting a well deserved rest! Who ever he is!
 
No, no no. You have it all wrong. Santa exists as a quantum being. He simultaneously exists at several locations, like Schrödinger's cat only in multiple places instead of alive and dead, and that is why the kids can never see him putting the presents in their stockings. Should he ever bee seen by a child, it would lock his location to one household there by making it impossible for him to be in the other houses, the quantum field would collapse and he would cease to exist permanently.

I think that is how it works… It has been a while since I last brushed up on my quantum theory.
 
Santa knocked the vent off our roof.

Not kidding. It's sitting on my front porch right now (can you say redneck?).


Further investigation found out how Santa knocked the vent off your roof



santa_poop.jpg
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/peregrine/

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