I thought the Techies on this list might enjoy this....
Jim
----- Original Message -----
From: "Moore, James (J.)" <jmoor119@volvocars.com>
To: <james.moore14@worldnet.att.net>
Sent: Friday, December 21, 2001 10:21 PM
Subject: FW: Santa might be dead!
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: todd.jacques@valeo.com [mailto:todd.jacques@valeo.com]
> Sent: Thursday, December 13, 2001 2:20 PM
> To: SFinnis@landroverna.com; JMOOR119@VOLVOCARS.COM; Ryman@NVG.com;
> zztdm1@pteng.gm.com; shawn.slusser@infineon.com
> Subject: Santa might be dead!
>
>
> From: todd.jacques@valeo.com
> To: SFinnis@landroverna.com, VNA.VNAMOORE@MEMO.VOLVO.COM, Ryman@NVG.com,
zztdm1@pteng.gm.com, shawn.slusser@infineon.com
> Date: Thu, 13 Dec 2001 14:20:11 -0500
> Subject: Santa might be dead!
>
> I thought my engineering friends might enjoy this. It's a bit long but
very
> educational.
>
>
>
> Here's Something To Consider. . .
>
>
> 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 there is 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 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
> stocking,
> 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 onto
> 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
> thousands tons, not counting Santa himself. On land, a conventional
> reindeer
> can pull no more than 300 pounds. Even granting that the "flying"
reindeer
> can
> pull 10 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 adsorb 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.Not that it matters, however, since Santa, as a result of
> accelerating
> from a dead stop to 650 m.p.h. in .001 seconds, would be subjected to
> acceleration forces of 17,000 g's. A 250 pound Santa (which seems almost
> ludicrously slim) would be pinned to the back of the sleigh by 4,315,015
> pounds
> of force,instantly crushing his bones and organs and reducing him to a
> quivering
> blob of pink goo. Therefore, if Santa ever did exist, he's dead now.
>
> Merry Christmas from an Engineer
>
>
>
>
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