As a result of an overwhelming lack of requests, and with research help from that renowned scientific journal SPY magazine (January, 1990) -- I am pleased to present the annual scientific inquiry into Santa Claus.

1. 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.

2. There are 2 billion children (persons under 18) in the world. BUT since Santa doesn't (appear) to handle the Muslim, Hindu, Jewish and 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 there's at least one good child in each.

3. 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). This works out to 822.6 visits per second. This is to say that for each Christian 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 of 75-1/2 million miles, not counting stops to do what most of us must do at least once every 31 hours, plus feeding, et cetera. 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 on earth, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a poky 27.4 miles per second; a conventional reindeer can run, tops, 15 miles per hour.

4. 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" (see point #1) could pull TEN TIMES the normal amount, we cannot do the job with eight, or even nine. We would need 214,200 reindeer. This increases the payload - not even counting the weight of the sleigh -to 353,430 tons. Again, for comparison -- this is four times the weight of the Queen Elizabeth.

5. 353,000 tons traveling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance; this will heat the reindeer up in the same fashion as spacecrafts re-entering 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 4.26 thousandths of a second. Santa, meanwhile, will be subjected to forces of acceleration 17,500.06 times greater than gravity. A 250-pound Santa (which seems ludicrously slim) would be pinned to the back of his sleigh by 4,315,015 pounds of force.

In conclusion -- If Santa ever DID deliver presents on Christmas Eve, he's dead now.


Killing you softly with his song,
- Stormsinger Shavay

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Pro Shop closed. Check out our new location in Pod Six.

Damn yous and your irrefutable logic, Shavay! Damn yous all ta hell! Now, I must go out and wreck every "Santa stop here" sign I see for fear that the force of impact of that much weight travelling at that speed coming to an instantaneous stop might rip the space time continuum.


Gladiator Maulem~

Read the Barbarian Seven!
http://tinyurl.com/gksan

Thank you for the post. I was at the mall while reading it and had everyone staring at me as tears rolled out from laughing so hard.

Then I printed it and distributed it.

Good times.

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"People are stupid; given proper motivation, almost anyone will believe almost anything. Because people are stupid, they will believe a lie because they want to believe it?s true, or because they are afraid it might be true." ~Wizard Zorander

I used to read that one in my physics classes every December.

I also read one about "Dihydrous Oxide" at the beginning of the school year as a caution to be wary of taking things at face value - if you've never seen this one, you really need to. It's hysterical - puts me to mind of the SouthPark episode about the rainforest concert thing, where at the end they show the statistics about people killed in the rain forest and such.

-V.

"Reject me not, sweet sounds! oh, let me live,
Till doom espy my towers and scatter them.
A city spell-bound under the aging sun,
Music my rampart, and my only one."
-Edna St. Vincent-Millay

Isn't dihydrous oxide just plain water?


_____________________________________
Gnomes Rule!

>> Yes and it's extremely dangerous. It's responsible for many deaths each year!

Also highly addictive. Sometimes I drink it in between inhales of oxygen (along with a few other elements). I was born addicted since my mother was on the stuff too. The oxygen thing is really a problem. Sometimes I spend whole nights, just lying there, breathing... Then I wake up and it's straight for the H20. I'm talking 2:00am... Sad really.

-/\/\
Moon mage Daellid

Nerds!


~Dulcinia

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Kadru exclaims, "Nimmi has crazy eyes!"

Haha. Dulci thinks men can reach maturity... --Rayje

I dunno just seems like every woman just hisses when your name is mentioned... --Anonymous

wasn't there a movie about those addicts once a long time ago?

called something like "Water Madness" or some such.

:oP Ragran

Actually, you were doing fine until point #5. Wind resistance at that speed is not what you think; there is a little-known quantum effect that takes place and approximately 200 miles per second and again at 400 miles per second (little known because only a few of us get to that speed often - see, for example, a mother's invariable slap on the hand from nowhere when you reach for the cookie jar between meals, or a Cubs fan's instanteous and unerring measurement of the strike zone when the umpire errs). Also, keep in mind that gravity varies measurably with speed even before approaching the speed of light and the quantum effect of wind resistance actually creates a reverse thrust force akin to drag reduction when passing the speed of sound. Thus, Santa and the reindeer live on.

For future reference, you may want to start your analysis with known constants: I did get my presents last year and every year past, so somehow Santa had a way to do it, we just did not see how.

Actually, I thought of that, but it IS the holiday season (and I hated those too).