Marc
Member
Registered: 11th Aug 02
Location: York
User status: Offline
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An Engineer's Christmas
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 (except maybe in Japan) 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
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, 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.
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 thousands 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 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 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 vaporised 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.
Merry Christmas!!!!
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Whittie
Member
Registered: 11th Aug 06
Location: North Wales Drives: BMW, Corsa & Fiat
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I now have a headache. 
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RyanSxi
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Registered: 26th Jul 06
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interesting 
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SteveW
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Registered: 15th Jul 02
Location: Up in the clouds
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ITS NOT TRUE..
I DONT BELIEVE THEM.. Marc why would you post something like this ?
WHY
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CorsAsh
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Registered: 19th Apr 02
Location: Munich
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Heard it before, but always cheers me up at this sad time of year.
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--Dave--
Banned
Registered: 17th Feb 04
Location: Essssseeeeex Drives: Black Supra TT
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Brett
Premium Member
Registered: 16th Dec 02
Location: Manchester
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That's ace
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Leighton
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Registered: 21st Feb 01
Location: Liverpool
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Next you will be saying Mary Poppins can not fit all that stuff in her bag
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Tom
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Registered: 3rd Apr 02
Location: Wirral, Merseyside
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I am going to memorise that and wreck every child I know's xmas
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BarnshaW
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Registered: 25th Oct 06
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spoilsport 
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Liam
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Registered: 19th Jan 06
Location: Stafford
User status: Offline
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quote:
Originally posted by Tom
I am going to memorise that and wreck every child I know's xmas
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Simon_16v
Member
Registered: 14th Aug 06
Location: Yorkshire
User status: Offline
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class
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Matt L
Member
Registered: 17th Apr 06
User status: Offline
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TNM
Member
Registered: 5th Apr 04
Location: Nottingham Drives: VW Tiguan
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So as long as your no further than the 5th house then you should get your present.
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Fonz
Premium Member
Registered: 12th May 06
Location: Newbury, Berks
User status: Offline
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now i know how ot answer when a child year old child asked me for proof Santa is no more!
brill!
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Riggy
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Registered: 9th Nov 05
Location: Middleton - Manchester
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PMSL thats ace lol
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mattk
Member
Registered: 27th Feb 06
Location: St. Helens
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is it worth reading??
:-EDIT:- yes ha ha, some sad badger has worked that out
[Edited on 12-12-2006 by mattk]
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abdus
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Registered: 23rd Feb 06
User status: Offline
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quote:
Originally posted by mattk
is it worth reading??
read on and you'll soon find out
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corsamike
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Registered: 26th Sep 01
Location: WIGAN Drives: Clio Sport 182 ; ZX 250R
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most amusing
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Hammer
Member
Registered: 11th Feb 04
User status: Offline
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Your all forgetting that santa has the ability to stop time with his special watch, silly billys 
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Eck
Premium Member
Registered: 17th Apr 06
Location: Lundin Links, Fife
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thats brilliant
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