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Is there a Santa Claus? (fwd)



Happy New Year ppl!

Enjoy.

w/ respect,
Vadik.
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 21 Dec 1995 19:17:08 +0000
From: The ORIGINAL shybear <shybear@micronet.net>
To: many ppl
Subject: Is there a Santa Claus?

A friend of mine from work gave this to me (right after I finished
decorating the office for Christmas).  I wonder what his message is. :)
Enjoy!   And, Happy Holidays!

Love to all,

terrye


As a result of an overwhelming lack of requests, and with research help from
that renowned 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 organisims 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 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 - 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 seems 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 chimney, 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 well accept),
we are now talking about .78 miles per household, and 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 the 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 amount, he cannot do the job with eight, or even
nine.  He would 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.

5.  353,000 tons traveling at 650 miles per second creates enourmous air
resistance - this will heat the reindeer up in the same fashion sa
spacecrafts re-entering the earth's atmosphere.  The lead pair of reindeer
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 is
dead now.

--
Vadik Vygonets  Hitchhiking on the Information Highway
vadik@dfw.net   http://www.dfw.net/~vadik/