Humansquish Posted December 17, 2005 Share Posted December 17, 2005 The Truth About Santa After much research, we present the Annual Aeronautical 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 0.78 miles per household. This makes for a total trip of 75.5 million miles - not counting stops to do what most of us do at least 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 mph. 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, each snack would have a calorie content of approximately 225 calories, (about 100 for the cookie and 125 for the milk). 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 travelling at 650 miles/second creates enormous air resistance. This will heat the reindeer up in the same fashion as a spacecraft 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 .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. A Merry Christmas to one and all! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ixminis Posted December 17, 2005 Share Posted December 17, 2005 Tee Hee - All ya really need is the ability to fold time, eh? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brushmaster Posted December 17, 2005 Share Posted December 17, 2005 Bah humbug!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
haldir Posted December 17, 2005 Share Posted December 17, 2005 now that was funny nice post RM Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
skavenbabe Posted December 17, 2005 Share Posted December 17, 2005 lol what's funny is that when my now 10 year old was about 6 or 7, he brought up some of those points in questions. How can Santa get to all the kids houses in one night? Doesn't Santa get sick from eating all those cookies? How can the reindeer pull all those toys? We finally just had to tell him Santa was magic, and you can do anything with magic! Of course being 10 now he doesn't believe anymore, but has decided it's fun to continue the whole thing for the sake of his 3 year old little brother. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vil-hatarn Posted December 18, 2005 Share Posted December 18, 2005 This is awesome...I've got to show this to my physics teacher, he'd get a kick out of it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
twjolson Posted December 18, 2005 Share Posted December 18, 2005 This is awesome...I've got to show this to my physics teacher, he'd get a kick out of it. No, save it for your next physics paper, he'll be impressed and you won't have to do any work! Sure, it's illegal, but let's not get boged down in details. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tabascojunkie Posted December 18, 2005 Share Posted December 18, 2005 That's pretty ccol. And like I tell my kids, if you don't believe in Santa, you don't get presents. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Super Administrators kit Posted December 18, 2005 Super Administrators Share Posted December 18, 2005 In a dazzling flash of logic my four-year-old killed Santa as we were telling him about the real St. Nick for Saint Nicholas Tag (a tradition Heidi brought over from Germany). "A long time ago, Saint Nicholas gave presents to people who really needed them." "He lived a long time ago?" "Yep." "And he died?" "Um..." "Santa's dead?" "Well, actually... if you put it that way..." Now I'm not really sad about this, but I think it's still really funny. kit Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Enchantra Posted December 18, 2005 Share Posted December 18, 2005 I actually received this through email back when I was in college. It's been floating around the internet for a while but it never ceases to get a good chuckle out of me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kheprera Posted December 19, 2005 Share Posted December 19, 2005 "The real Santa has passed on, but he had an heir, and the legacy of Santa has passed from father to son since the first one." -- That's how I plan on handling any "Santa's dead" statement. "Santa is magic, and magic can do anything. The reindeer rely on Santa's magic to help them fly, and it only works on Christmas Eve, so they don't fly the rest of the year, that's why no one has seen a reindeer fly. The same magic allows Santa, the reindeer, and the sleigh to exist in another time dimension, making it seem like they can be in more than one place at once. The sleigh also has wheels as well as the runners, so if there is no snow, he can still land smoothly on the rooftops. If there is no chimney, Santa uses Christmas Magic to make one to allow him inside. This allows Santa to visit everyone all over the world to deliver the toys. Meanwhile, Mommy's, Daddy's, Aunt's, Uncles, and Grandparents help Santa out by getting some of the gifts beforehand so he doesn't have to carry quite so much. This cuts down on delivery time, list making, and gives the elves a break from toy-making. That's why we have toy companies." -- And that's how I plan on answering everything else. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tzor Posted December 19, 2005 Share Posted December 19, 2005 Silly aeronotics engineers, Santa is a quantum mechanical effect. You see at precisely the stroke of mignight Santa becomes a probility curve that is located inside every home at the same time. Of course he can only be observed in one location at any one time, but since there are few people who view the insides of multiple homes at the same time this tends not to be a signifiant quantum mechanica problem as it might first appear. The same wave equation also causes his sled to appear on the rooftops with a similiar probability of P(hohoho). And that, my dear is why electrons don't spontaneously decay through sychrotron radiation ... elves. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spike Posted December 19, 2005 Share Posted December 19, 2005 Hehe..though there was no convincing my older (yet more naive) sister about the true nature of Santa, I found out early on how he did it. He subcontracts out his gift-delivering work to a man who bears a remarkable resemblence to my dad, and who can't assemble any of those some-assembly-required toys, and who swears alot. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Reaperbryan Posted December 19, 2005 Share Posted December 19, 2005 Grinches and non-beleivers don't get presents. you should be ashamed of yourself for spreading malicious tales about Mr. Claus. I know Santa is real because I get presents every year, and so do my 3 children. If it's not Santa, it'd have to be me doing it, and I don't *do* getting up at all hours to shove boxes under flora of any kind. Especially not in the middle of winter, when my blankie is so snuggly. tsk, tsk, tsk. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Saint of Sinners Posted December 21, 2005 Share Posted December 21, 2005 Reindeer fly because of Magical Christmas Dust... A li'l Christmas dust for the Reindeer... a li'l for Santa... a li'l more for Santa. Which is why I suspect Santa's nose is so big and Red. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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