THREE Santa's:
#1...An Engineer looks at the upcoming return of Santa Clas...
FINALLY!.....The Truth about Santa!!
After much research, I present the annual engineers' report on the theory
of Santa!
No known species of reindeer can fly. BUT there are 300,000 species
of living organisms yet to be classified, and while most of these
are insects and germs, this does not COMPLETELY rule out flying
reindeer, which only Santa has ever seen.
There are 2 billion children (persons under 18) in the world. BUT
since Santa doesn't (appear) to handle the Muslim, Hindu, Jewish &
Buddhist children, that reduces the workload to 15% of the total -
378 million according to Population Reference Bureau. At an average
(census) rate of 3.5 children per household, that's 91.8 million
homes. One presumes that 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/second. That is to say that 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 that each of 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), we are now
talking about .78 miles/household, a total trip of 75.5 million
miles; not counting stops to do what most of us do at lease once
every 31 hours, plus eating etc. So Santa's sleigh must be moving at
650 miles/second, 3,000 times the speed of sound. For purposes of
comparison, the fastest man-made vehicle on earth, the Ulysses space
probe, moves at a pokey 27.4 miles/second. A conventional reindeer
can run, tops, 15 miles/hour.
If every one of the 91.8 million homes with good children were to
put out a single chocolate chip cookie and an 8 ounce glass of 2%
milk, the total calories (needless to say other vitamins and
minerals) would be approximately 225 calories (100 for the cookie,
give or take, and 125 for the milk, give or take). Multiplying the
number of calories per house by the number of homes (225 x 91.8 x
1000000), we get the total number of calories Santa consumes that
night, which is 20,655,000,000 calories. To break it down further, 1
pound is equal to 3500 calories. Dividing our total number of
calories by the number of calories in a pound (20655000000 / 3500)
and we get the number of pounds Santa gains, 5901428.6, which is
2950.7 tons.
The payload on the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming
that each child gets nothing more than a medium-sized Lego set (2
lb.), the sleigh is carrying 321,300 tons, not counting Santa, who
is invariably described as overweight. On land, conventional
reindeer can pull no more than 300lb. Even granting that "flying
reindeer" (see #1) can pull 10 TIMES the normal amount, we cannot do
the job with 8, or even 9, reindeer. We need 214,200. This increases
the payload - not counting the weight of the sleigh - to 353,430
tons. This is four times the weight of the ocean-liner Queen
Elizabeth.
353,000 tons traveling at 650 miles/second creates enormous air
resistance. This will heat the reindeer up in the same fashion as a
spacecraft reentering the earth's atmosphere. The lead pair of
reindeer will absorb 14.3 QUINTILLION joules of energy. Per second.
Each. In short, they will burst into flame almost instantaneously,
exposing the reindeer behind them and create deafening sonic booms
in their wake. The entire reindeer team will be vaporized
within .00426 of a second. Meanwhile, Santa, will be subjected to
centrifugal forces 17,500.06 times greater than gravity. A 250 lb.
Santa, being very conservative in terms of guessing Santa's weight,
would be pinned to the back of his sleigh by 4,315,015 lb. of force.
If Santa ever DID deliver presents on Christmas Eve, he's dead now.
#2:
One particular Christmas a long time ago, Santa was getting ready for his annual trip, but there were problems everywhere.
Four of his elves got sick, and the trainee elves did not produce the toys as quickly as the regular ones, so Santa was beginning to feel the pressure of being behind schedule.
Then, Mrs. Claus told him that her mom was coming to visit, which stressed Santa out even more.
When he went to harness the reindeer, he found that three of them were about to give birth and two had jumped the fence and were out, heaven knows where.
More stress.
When he began to load the sleigh, one of the boards cracked and the toy bag fell to the ground, scattering the toys.
Frustrated, Santa went back into the house for a cup of coffee and a shot of whisky. When he went to the cupboard, he discovered that the elves had hid the liquor and there was nothing to drink. In his frustration, he accidentally dropped the coffee pot and it broke into hundreds of little pieces.
So he went to get the broom and found that mice had eaten the straw it was made from.
Just then, the doorbell rang and Santa cussed his way to the door.
He opened the door and there was a little angel with a great big Christmas tree. The angel said very cheerfully, "Merry Christmas Santa! Isn't it just a lovely day? I have this beautiful tree for you. Where would you like me to put it?
Thus began the tradition of the little angel atop the Christmas tree.
#3: A Christmas Letter from Santa
I was going to bring you all gifts for the 12 days of Christmas, but we've had some problems.
The 12 fiddlers fiddling have all come down with VD from fiddling with the 10 ladies dancing.
The 11 lords leaping have knocked up the 8 maids a-milking.
The 9 pipers piping have been arrested for doing weird things to the 7 swans a-swimming.
The 6 geese a-laying, 4 calling birds, 3 French hens, 2 turtle doves and the partridge in a pear tree have me up to my sled runners in
bird shit.
On top of all this Mrs. Claus is going through menopause, 8 of my
reindeer are in heat, the elves have joined Gay Liberation and some people who can't read a calendar have scheduled Christmas
for the 5th of January.
Maybe next year I will be able to get my act together and bring you the things YOU want. This year I suggest you get your ass down to
Wal-mart before everything is gone.
Sincerely,
Santa Claus
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