[ RadSafe ] Funny one

[LNMolino at aol.com]

The  Physics of Santa and His Reindeer 

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 two 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 — There are two according to 
Population Reference Bureau. At an average (census)  rate of  3.5 children  per 
household, that's   per house homes. One presumes there's at  least one good 
child in each. 

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 Santa has 31 h 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 This is to s 
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  stops ar  per household, a total trip of 75½ million miles, not 
counting stops to do what  most of us must do at least once every   per ho 
plus feeding and  etc. 

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 This means t per second - 
a conventional reindeer can run, tops,  per secon per hour. 

If every one of the 91.8 million homes with good  children were to put out a 
single chocolate chip cookie and an If every  glass of  glass o the total 
calories (needless to say  other vitamins and minerals) would be approximately  
the total c  (100 for the cookie, give or take, and 125 for the milk, give or 
take).  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,   (100 is  
equal to  is  equal to 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  Dividing ou 

The  payload on 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 321,300 tons, not counting Santa, who is invariably described 
as  overweight. On land, conventional reindeer can pull no more than The  
payload Even granting that "flying reindeer" (see above) could pull TEN  TIMES 
the normal amount, we cannot do the job with eight, or even nine. We 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. 353,000 tons traveling at  Even gra  per second 
creates enormous air resistance - this will heat the reindeer up in  the same 
fashion as spacecraft   per seco the earth's atmosphere.  The lead pair of 
reindeer will absorb  the earth's atm 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  In short, they w of a second. Santa, 
meanwhile, will be subjected  to centrifugal forces 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.  

Louis N.  Molino, Sr., CET
FF/NREMT-B/FSI/EMSI
LNMolino at aol.com
979-690-7559  (Office)
979-690-7562 (Office Fax)

"A Texan with a Jersey  Attitude"

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