Why engineers should not try to explain Christmas to children

Platapus · 12-21-24, 07:30 AM

I openly confess to stealing this from an old IEEE article

Santa has 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). Assuming that Santa only visits households that believe in Santa Claus, which are estimated to number 91,802,160 (average household of 2.3 of estimated 2.1 Billion people who celebrate Christmas and can be categorized as being "good").

This works out to 822.6 visits per second. This is to say that for each household with good children, Santa has 1/ 1000th of a 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 per household, a total trip of75-1/2 million miles, not counting stops to do what most of us must do at least once every 31 hours, plus feeding and etc.

This means that 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; a conventional reindeer can run, sustained, 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 pounds), 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 300 pounds. Even granting that "flying reindeer" could pull TEN TIMES the normal amount, we cannot do the job with eight, or even nine. We need 214,200 reindeer. And they better be full sized too.

This increases the payload - not even counting the weight of the sleigh to 353,430 tons. 353,000 tons traveling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance. This will heat the reindeer up in the same fashion as space crafts re-entering the earth's atmosphere. The lead pair of reindeer will each absorb 14.3 QUINTILLION joules of energy, per second.

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.

Santa, meanwhile, will be subjected to acceleration forces 17,500.06 times greater than gravity. A 250- pound Santa ( which seems ludicrously slim) would be subjected to a force of 4,375,015 pounds.
In conclusion - If Santa ever did deliver presents on Christmas Eve, he did it once and he's dead now.

12-21-24, 07:30 AM	#1
Platapus Fleet Admiral Join Date: Oct 2006 Posts: 19,360 Downloads: 63 Uploads: 0	Why engineers should not try to explain Christmas to children I openly confess to stealing this from an old IEEE article Santa has 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). Assuming that Santa only visits households that believe in Santa Claus, which are estimated to number 91,802,160 (average household of 2.3 of estimated 2.1 Billion people who celebrate Christmas and can be categorized as being "good"). This works out to 822.6 visits per second. This is to say that for each household with good children, Santa has 1/ 1000th of a 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 per household, a total trip of75-1/2 million miles, not counting stops to do what most of us must do at least once every 31 hours, plus feeding and etc. This means that 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; a conventional reindeer can run, sustained, 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 pounds), 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 300 pounds. Even granting that "flying reindeer" could pull TEN TIMES the normal amount, we cannot do the job with eight, or even nine. We need 214,200 reindeer. And they better be full sized too. This increases the payload - not even counting the weight of the sleigh to 353,430 tons. 353,000 tons traveling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance. This will heat the reindeer up in the same fashion as space crafts re-entering the earth's atmosphere. The lead pair of reindeer will each absorb 14.3 QUINTILLION joules of energy, per second. 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. Santa, meanwhile, will be subjected to acceleration forces 17,500.06 times greater than gravity. A 250- pound Santa ( which seems ludicrously slim) would be subjected to a force of 4,375,015 pounds. In conclusion - If Santa ever did deliver presents on Christmas Eve, he did it once and he's dead now. __________________ abusus non tollit usum - A right should NOT be withheld from people on the basis that some tend to abuse that right.