Santa's Sleigh

[Innershield]

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 that there 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 he travels 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 stockings, 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 on to 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 thousand tons, not counting
Santa himself. On land, a conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300
pounds.
Even granting that the "flying" reindeer could pull ten 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 traveling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air
resistance-this would heat up the reindeer in the same fashion as a
spacecraft reentering the earth's atmosphere. The lead pair of reindeer would
absorb 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
vaporized 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 17,500 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, i nstantly 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

[Ripper2860]

STFU Scrooge !!!!

[Tommyknocker]

Yet several questions remain How did all those good little children get everything they told Santa they wanted? If Santa Claus didn't exist, who was that franciscan monk who died in Myra, Turkey 0n December 6, 343 A.D.? Also if he doesn't drive a flying sleigh pulled by eight reindeer, what was it that NORAD reported on Radar last December 24, 2004? They scrambled two interceptor aircraft and each pilot reported seeing a red suited man being pulled by the aforementioned aircraft? So Santa Claus does exist. So have a happy New Year and put the crack pipe down.

[Innershield]

you automatically believe everything you hear?

[Ripper2860]

Some see a beauty queen and some see an ugly old lady. Some see Santa and some don't. Ain't nothing wrong with that.

Besides -- there are many undiscovered and mis-understood principles of physics involved here including wormholes, string theories and such. Just because one cannot explain it does not mean it cannot exist. Faith is believing in something you do not understand and cannot explain. I have faith in Santa !!

If superman can stop time by stopping the rotation of the earth -- why can't Santa. Maybe Christmas night is really longer than we think !!

Oh yee of little faith !!

[Innershield]

If you believe in santa that's fine with me. i did not post this because i was trying to disprove the existence of santa. i just thought it was interesting and funny and maybe someone else might enjoy it to.

[Ripper2860]

Na. I know better. Seen it before and it is well thought through and funny.


The sound of my 4-year old's voice and the look in her eyes as she talks about Santa though ...

... as long as he's real in her heart he'll be real to me !! Maybe he isn't flesh and bones, but he is representative of a spirit of optimism and youth that we should all keep in our hearts!!

[thecoalman]

... as long as he's real in her heart he'll be real to me !! Maybe he isn't flesh and bones, but he is representative of a spirit of optimism and youth that we should all keep in our hearts!!

Well said ripper. My GF's girl is older now and doesn't believr in Santa and Christmas morning isn't the same.

Here's a funny Santa-Coal story..... My Uncle is a collector of coal mining artifacts so for Christmas I got him this giant chunk of Anthracite, well over 300lbs. So we bring the coal in the house and give it to him and my niece comes down the stairs. Her eyes get as big as saucers cause it's Christmas Afternoon. She's goes "Who got that?" "Well you Grandfather did" we tell her. She turns to her Grandfather and goes " Wow Poppy you must have been really bad"

Guess it is one of those things where you have to be there but there wasn't a person there that heard that wasn't rolling on the floor laughing.

[vitualis]

Yet several questions remain How did all those good little children get everything they told Santa they wanted? If Santa Claus didn't exist, who was that franciscan monk who died in Myra, Turkey 0n December 6, 343 A.D.?

Yes, the biggest question is does the Franciscan order have the secrets to time travel???

http://www.catholic-forum.com/saints/ncd03376.htm



Regards.

[northcat_8]

I agree coalman, once the kids don't believe Christmas morning just isn't the same.

[Craig Tucker]

I know I posted this exact same thing on here probrably a year or so back, forum search wont find it though but I know its here somewhere.