Engineers Ruin Christmas For Children

[smartchick]

This is an article our English teacher read to the class before we went on Winter break. Most of the class found it to be really fun. Others [few] found it to be heartbreaking. Btw at the end of it, its supposed to say Merry Christmas. [but they left that part out.] *Warning- If you love Santa/Believe in him do not read. For the record I love Santa and believe in him [if we want to refer to magic] and I still find this humorous. But serious children beware. Its nothing gruesome though. Just heart breaking :P


*Edit- Link not working, so I posted it in the next post.
Sorry about that. :D

[smartchick]

There are approximately two billion children (persons under 18) in the
world. However, since Santa does not usually 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 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 remaining presents
under the tree, eat whatever snacks have been left for him, get back up (http://www.flexbeta.net/forums/lofiversion/index.php/t2285.html#)
the chimney, jump into the sleigh and get onto 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 (http://www.flexbeta.net/forums/lofiversion/index.php/t2285.html#), the Ulysses space probe, and
moves at a poky 27.4 miles per second, and a conventional reindeer can
run (at best) 15 miles per hour.

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 can pull 10 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).
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 reentering the earth's atmosphere.

The lead pair of reindeer would adsorb 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 acceleration forces of 17,000
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.

[Frumpy]

Not sure where they got their math from for the acceleration part. I think they assumed Newton's laws held for US customary units, yet used the Newton without converting it to lbf's. But he'd actually experience 26,458,766,800 lbf's and 1,035,313,673 g's. ∆V has to be in meters/second, not miles. But nevertheless, yeah, he's dead.

A lot of the math is actually screwy in this. 378,000,000*2 = >1,000,000,000? 108,000,000*.78 = 75,500,000? 14.3 quintillion joules of energy? Assuming a 200 lb reindeer (on the low end, to their benefit), that number would be more around 5.1 quadrillion. If I had to guess, I'd think they're thinking weight = mass.

[stmx]

I'd think that engineers ruin christmas a lot less than common sense does.

[smartchick]

I don't think it's supposed to be scientifical, but okay! :P

[jasondolleylover1]

wow. that's the funniest thing ever.

[sing2theLord]

that's awesome. (:

[k pitcher]

Yes, however, in case you're unaware, Santa is magical.
Thus, it is all possible.

[smartchick]

^OMGosh! I know!! That's what I told my teacher!
That's why the whole class thinks I'm crazy now! :P

[NancyDrew]

Oh, lovely.

[forever_miley]

that was funny (:

[HannahMontanaFan9463]

SANTA RULES!!!
dude, he's like, my hero. cuz i mean, he is magical, and i get free stuff.
HOW COOL IS THAT?! lol :P
but yeah, that was a pretty funny article. :P

[V-ball Baby 101]

werid

[smartchick]

SANTA RULES!!!
dude, he's like, my hero. cuz i mean, he is magical, and i get free stuff.
HOW COOL IS THAT?! lol :P
but yeah, that was a pretty funny article. :P


AwwHaHa!! I agree I love Santa! :lol:
Free stuff is the best part!:P