Is there a Father Christmas ?

[Craig Tucker]

Findings :

1.
No known species of reindeer can fly. BUT, there are an estimated 300,000 species of living organisms yet to be classified by biologists. Whilst most of these are insects and germs this does not COMPLETELY rule out flying reindeer that only Santa has seen.

2.
According to the world health organisation there are 2.1 billion children (persons under 18) in the world. However, Father Christmas does not (appear) to handle children of the Muslim, Hindu, Jewish, Buddhist and other faiths. This reduces the workload to 15% of the total - 321 million Christian children - according to the population reference bureau. At an average (census) rate of 3.5 children per houshold that makes 91.7 million homes. One presumes that there is at least one good child in each.

3.
Father Christmas has 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the differing time-zones and the rotation of the Earth, assuming that he travels from East to West (which seems logical). This works out at 821.7 visits per second. That is, for each Christian houshold with children, Father Christmas has around 0.001 seconds to park the sleigh, hop out, jump down the chimney, fill the stockings, distribute the remaining presents under the tree, eat and drink whatever snacks have been left, get back up the chimney, get into the sleigh and move onto the next house. This is not counting stops to do what most of us have to do at least once in 31 hours.

4.
Assuming that these 91 million homes are evenly distributed around the earth (which of course, is false but for the purposes of our calculations we will accept it), Santa moves an average of 0.78 miles between houses. That is a total trip of 71.5 million miles. This means that Santas sleigh is travelling at 641 miles per second - over 3000 times the speed of sound. For the purposes of comparison the fatsest man made vehicle, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a pokey 27.4 miles per second. A conventional reindeer can run, tops, 15 miles per hour over a sustained distance.

5.
The payload on the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming that each good christian child (i.e. one per houshold) gets nothing more than a medium sized Lego set (weight 1Kg) then the sleigh has a payload of 91,700 tonnes. This does not count the weight of the sleigh, or Father Christmas, who is invariably described as overweight. On land a conventional reindeer can pull no more than 650Kg. Even granting that flying reindeer (see point 1 above) could pull ten times the normal amount, Father Christmas cannot do the job with six or even eight reindeer. He would need 141,000 reindeer. If we take an average weight of a reindeer to be 20 stone (127Kg) then the total weight of the animal/sleigh/payload ensemble increases to 109,613 tonnes. For comparison this is eight times heavier than the QEII ocean liner.

6.
109,613 tonnes travelling at 641 miles per second creates enourmous air resistance. This will heat-up the reindeer in the same fashion as a spacecraft re-entering the Earths atmosphere. The lead pair of reindeer will absorb 14.3 Quintillion Joules of energy per second each. In short they will burst into flames almost instantaneously, exposing the reindeer behind them, and will create deafening sonic booms in their wake. The entire 141,000 reindeer will be vapourised within 0.0043 seconds. Father Christmas meanwhile will be subjected to forces 17,500 times greater than gravity. As a comparison a jet-fighter pilot pulling out of a verticle dive will be subjected to 7 times the force of gravity. A 17 stone Santa (which seems ludicrously slim) would be pinned to the back of the sleigh by 4,315,015 pounds of force.

Conclusion

If Father Christmas ever DID deliver presents on Christmas Eve, he's dead now.

[Hardcoreruss]

Oh dear Craig, oh dear !!

[Will Hay]

Oh dear.
Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear

[Will Hay]

I best keep my son away from this
W.

[flaninacupboard]

That's great! my favourite was "14.3 Quintillion Joules of energy per second" that hits the comedy spot!

[Will Hay]

Personally I refuse to accept the findings, regardless of how good a cut and paste job Craig did
Will

[Hardcoreruss]

That's great! my favourite was "14.3 Quintillion Joules of energy per second" that hits the comedy spot!

Yeah what a wicked word Quintillion !!!

[Craig Tucker]

Personally I refuse to accept the findings, regardless of how good a cut and paste job Craig did
Will

Actually I had to type it in by hand. Someone gave it to me on a sheet of paper. Have you ever heard of anything so archaic.

[Hardcoreruss]

Personally I refuse to accept the findings, regardless of how good a cut and paste job Craig did
Will

Actually I had to type it in by hand. Someone gave it to me on a sheet of paper. Have you ever heard of anything so archaic.

You must be bored

[Craig Tucker]

Yep

[Hardcoreruss]

What do you do Craig ?

[pbhalerao]

3.
Father Christmas has 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the differing time-zones and the rotation of the Earth, assuming that he travels from East to West (which seems logical). This works out at 821.7 visits per second. That is, for each Christian houshold with children, Father Christmas has around 0.001 seconds to park the sleigh, hop out, jump down the chimney, fill the stockings, distribute the remaining presents under the tree, eat and drink whatever snacks have been left, get back up the chimney, get into the sleigh and move onto the next house. This is not counting stops to do what most of us have to do at least once in 31 hours.

Perhaps he reindeers are T-1000 like and his sledge is derived out the deLorean.

[pbhalerao]

3.
Father Christmas has 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the differing time-zones and the rotation of the Earth, assuming that he travels from East to West (which seems logical). This works out at 821.7 visits per second. That is, for each Christian houshold with children, Father Christmas has around 0.001 seconds to park the sleigh, hop out, jump down the chimney, fill the stockings, distribute the remaining presents under the tree, eat and drink whatever snacks have been left, get back up the chimney, get into the sleigh and move onto the next house. This is not counting stops to do what most of us have to do at least once in 31 hours.

Perhaps he reindeers are T-1000 like and his sledge is derived out the deLorean.

What I mean is reindeers can run like hell as the T-1000

[Craig Tucker]

What do you do Craig ?

I am a Laboratory Manager, I also do a lot of Solid Modelling/CAD

[Hardcoreruss]

In what field ?

[Craig Tucker]

Mechanical Engineering

[Will Hay]

....I also do a lot of Solid Modelling

So does my 18 month old son, although I would call his 'impressionism'

.......actually, I've broken off AutoCad to write this, small world eh?
Will

[indolikaa]

Craig. Dude. You're scarin' me.

[tgpo]

Funny stuff, but perhaps Santa cloned himself

[flaninacupboard]

No! not another santa clone!! Quick!! get some NERF!!!
(obscure sluggy freelance reference)

Meant to ask Will, I see you're a Q.S., who do you work for?

Someone i know is about to start her first job as Q.S. for a £4,000,000 contract in Peterborough for Tri/Gallafords, and she's a bit nervous because her last job was Derft (which i'm sure you had a good old laugh about!)

[MOVIEGEEK]

You are in violation of forum rules and are formally issued a warning-NO RELIGION! :P

When I read the topic it made me think of that Kinks song.

[g_shocker182]

Way to ruin it, craig.




:P

[Will Hay]

Meant to ask Will, I see you're a Q.S., who do you work for?

£4M?

I work for a specialist subcontractor who installs architectural aluminium, hise rise structural screens to sides of offices etc.
Kinda like Canary Wharf stuff, you know?
Some of my subcontracts are £2m, so the Main Contractor value will be circa. £40m
Still, £4m is a good place to start, my package on that job would be worth circa £200 thou.
I've worked for Try/Gallifords in the past.
They should have done Waterfront Business Park, Fleet (I don't know where you are) but pulled out at the eleventh hour for some reason and Wates did it.
That was an order worth £0.5m to me and I'm just agreeing the final account (finished at £711,200-ish with variations
Will