Santa Scientific Facts

[Mrjaydeeone]

Hey, y'all -- In case you've wondered: IS THERE A SANTA CLAUS? As a result of an overwhelming lack of requests, and with research help from that renown scientific journal SPY magazine (January, 1990) - I am pleased to present the annual scientific inquiry into Santa Claus.
1) 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.
2) There are 2 billion children (persons under 1 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 - 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 there's at least one good child in each.
3) 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 seemes logical). This works out to 822.6 visits 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 ney, 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 .78 miles per household, a total trip of 75-1/2 million miles, not counting stops to do what most of us must do at least once every 31 hours, 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 27.4 miles per second - a conventional reindeer can run, tops, 15 miles per hour.
4) The payload on the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming that each child gets nothing more than a medium-sized lego set (2 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 300 pounds. Even granting that "flying reindeer" (see point #1) could pull TEN TIMES the normal anount, 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. Again, for comparison - this is four times the weight of the Queen Elizabeth.
5) 353,000 tons travelling at 650 miles per second creates enourmous air resistance - this will heat the reindeer up in the same fashion as spacecrafts re-entering the earth's atmosphere. The lead pair of deer 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 4.26 thousandths 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.

[Raven18940]

I always love this, especially they last one where they explain it with physics.

[Vypurr2]

What if he can slow down time?

[Drftpretty]

^Simply solved with the addition of a Flux capacitor.

[sisforsurfing]

Originally Posted by Vypurr

What if he can slow down time?

What if he CAN? He does.
Haters.

[FASTERTHANU]

should I put cookies & milk out?

[Drftpretty]

I betcha if Santa had a WRX Wagon those numbers would be cut in half and the sonic boom would be doubled.

*Waits for Honest Bob to give the thumbs up smiley*

[Erik]

Originally Posted by FASTERTHANU

should I put cookies & milk out?

I am. Anyone that can slow down time will always get a few cookies from me.

[licensedtothrill]

of course the wagon all that stuff won't fit in the trunk duh. but what about the reindeer??? what about the reindeer??

p.s. how many toys would the elves have to make each day to have enough for christmas??? someone figure that out and ill leave them milk and cookies.

[james_ls]

That's cool//funny and all.

But him and Doc already got that covered....

[Vypurr2]

Originally Posted by licensedtothrill

of course the wagon all that stuff won't fit in the trunk duh. but what about the reindeer??? what about the reindeer??

p.s. how many toys would the elves have to make each day to have enough for christmas??? someone figure that out and ill leave them milk and cookies.

That's an easy one! Assuming that there are 378 million children from the above data, we can assume that the elves must make about 5x as many presents (some kids get more because they are "good" and some get less because they are "bad", so it averages about 5 toys per a child)

So the total number of toys needed is 1,890,000,000.

But how many elves does santa have? Well lets assume that his workshop is a 10,000 sq ft building (underground of course). In this building atleast half of that space is take up by tools, benches, and parts. So space for elves is really more like 5,000 sq ft. If its setup like rows:

Elves - Elves - Elves - Elves
---------------------------
---------------------------

Elves - Elves - Elves - Elves
---------------------------
---------------------------

Elves - Elves - Elves - Elves
---------------------------
---------------------------

Then they can maximize the space required, leaving enough working space for about 1000 elves with 4 sq ft of room each (remember elves are smaller so they can work with that space).

Now to have 1000 elves make 1,890,000,000 toys (assuming there are no slackers), each would have to make 1,890,000 toys in 364 days. Thats a rate of about 5,193 toys each day.

Thats not totally out of the question if they were easy to assembly, but with toys like PS3 its not likely that they are gonna make 5,193 units a day (since it takes Sony atleast a year to make that many!).

But your answer is without shifting time, it will take Santa's Elves 364 days to produce all of the toys if each of the 1000 elves makes 5,193 toys a day.

[05Accent]

damn... yea what if he could slow down time?? ya never know.

[willthethrill]

hahah I love number 5, but they completely forgot to factor in that Santa has magic. Not David Blane magic either...real magic!

[Honest_Bob]

Originally Posted by Drftpretty

I betcha if Santa had a WRX Wagon those numbers would be cut in half and the sonic boom would be doubled.

*Waits for Honest Bob to give the thumbs up smiley*

Originally Posted by licensedtothrill

of course the wagon all that stuff won't fit in the trunk duh. but what about the reindeer??? what about the reindeer??

BTW reindeer have been replaced with turbos this year.

[Uberu]

Originally Posted by Drftpretty

I betcha if Santa had a WRX Wagon those numbers would be cut in half and the sonic boom would be doubled.

*Waits for Honest Bob to give the thumbs up smiley*

[DoubleOughtCel]

Originally Posted by FASTERTHANU

should I put cookies & milk out?

I'd leave out some race gas. He's gonna need it.

[sherwood]

weak sauce..santas real

[Tru2Blu]

Originally Posted by willthethrill

hahah I love number 5, but they completely forgot to factor in that Santa has magic. Not David Blane magic either...real magic!

yo david blame scares me. is he for real?