Okay all you engineers, here's one of my favorite Christmas 'stories' I always enjoy sharing it with friends
----Brad
TRY EXPLAINING THE PHYSICS OF THIS TO YOUR KIDS IF YOU HAVE ANY!
Do you believe in SANTA?
Think about this one....
If you do believe, then you must understand that there are 2 billion children in the world. Fortunately for Santa, he must only deliver presents to the Christian ones (approximately 376 million). We can assume that some 16 percent of these children have been bad and are thus ineligible for gift getting. Still, at an average rate of 3.5 children per household Santa has a backbreaking 91.5 million homes to visit on Christmas Eve.
Thanks to the rotation of the Sun, Santa has 31 hours of nighttime to accomplish his task. However, this still works out to 822.6 household visits per second, so he has just over a thousandth of a second to land his sleigh, jump down the chimney, fill the stockings, distribute the rest of the presents under the tree, eat whatever snacks have been left out, get back up the chimney to the reindeer, climb into his sleigh, take off, and fly to the next house.
Assuming that all 91.8 million stops are spread evenly over the globe, (which they are not) Santa must travel 0.79 miles per household, a total trip of 72,522,000 miles. Given the 31-hour time period, his sleigh and reindeer must maintain an average speed of 650 miles per second, or more than 3,000 times the speed of sound. (Note: reindeer travel 15 miles per hour on land.) At 2 lbs. of presents per good Christian child, (a conservative estimate) the sleigh must be capable of supporting some 321,300 tons; plus Santa - an overweight man. Santa's massive sleigh would then have to be drawn by 214,200 reindeer. This number is valid assuming that an airborne reindeer can pull ten times its weight. (Note: a reindeer pulls less than 300 lbs. of weight on land.) With the addition of the beasts, Santa's overall payload comes to 353,430 tons, excluding the sleigh itself.
Three hundred fifty three thousand tons of reindeer and presents are going to create an enormous amount of air resistance - especially at 650 miles per second. This air resistance will heat the reindeer in the same way a spacecraft heats up when it enters the earth's atmosphere. According to calculations, the lead pair of reindeer will each absorb 14.3 quintillion joules of energy per second. They will burst into spectacular multicolored flames almost instantaneously, exposing the deer behind them. Santa will continue on his mission leaving deafening sonic booms in his wake, and every 4.26 thousandths of a second, sloughing off a pair of completely obliterated, charred reindeer.
As for Santa, he will first be subject to centrifugal forces 17,500.06 times greater than gravity. A 250 lb. Santa will be pinned to the back of his sleigh by 4,375,015 pounds of force. This force will kill Santa instantly, crushing his bones and pulverizing his flesh, essentially liquidizing him. Four seconds later (After the reindeer are incinerated) he and the sleigh will burst into flame, reducing the jovial character to an unrecognizable cinder.
Seasons Greetings. (Source unknown)
VERY funny Santa facts!
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