Something for you all to think about:

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xander
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Something for you all to think about:

Postby xander » Sun Dec 24, 2006 11:15 pm

Yes, I know this has been around forever, but it never gets old.
Santa Claus: An Engineer's Perspective

I. There are approximately 2 billion children (persons under 18) in the world. However, since Santa does not visit children of Muslim, Hindu, Jewish, Jehovah's Witnesses, or Buddist religions, this reduces the workload on 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 that there is at least one good child in each.

II. Santa has about 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the different time zones and rotation of the earth, assuming he travels 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 at least one good child, Santa has around 1/1000th of a second to park the sleigh, jump out, go down the chimney, fill the stockings, distribute the remaining presents under the tree, eat whatever snacks have been left for him, get back up the chimney, jump in the sleigh, and move on to the next house. (That's why it's really pointless to stay up and wait for him....)

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 breaks. This means that Santa's sleigh is moving at 650 miles per second, 3000 times the speed of sound. For the purposes of comparison, the fastest man-made vehicle, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a pokey 75.4 miles per second, and a conventional reindeer can run (at best) 15 miles per hour.

III. The payload of the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming that each child has nothing more than a medium-sized Lego set (two pounds), the sleigh is carrying over 500 thousand tons, not counting Santa himself. On land, a conventional reindeer can pull nothing more than 300 pounds. Even granted that "flying" reindeer could pull ten times the normal amount, the job can't be done with eight or nine of them; Santa would need 360,000 of them. This increases the payload, not counting the sleigh itself, another 54,000 tons, or roughly seven times the weight of the Queen Elizibeth (the ship, not the monarch).

IV. 600,000 tons traveling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance; this would heat up the reindeer in the same fasion as a spacecraft re-entering the earth's atmosphere. The lead pair of reindeer would absorb 14.3 quintillion joules of energy per second each. In short, they would burst into flames almost instantaneously, exposing the reindeer behind them and causing deafening sonic booms in their wake. The entire reindeer team would be vaporized within 4.2 thousandths of a second, or right about the time Santa reaches the fifth house on his trip. Not that it matters, however, since Santa, as a result of accelerating from a dead stop to 650 miles per second in .001 seconds, would be subjected to centrifugal forces of 17,500 G's. A 250 pound Santa (which seem ludicrously slim) would be pinned to the back of the sleigh by 4,315,015 pound of force, instantly crushing his bones and organs and reducing him to a quivering blob of pink goo.

V. Therefore, if Santa did exist, he's dead now.


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Postby sirvoks » Sun Dec 24, 2006 11:24 pm

NO WAY!111ONE!11!!111ONE!!!!ONEONEONE!!!













































Nah, sounds logical.

Anders
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Postby SuVir » Sun Dec 24, 2006 11:26 pm

lol where did you get that from?

My headteacher at school had an assembly with something like that a long time ago :D
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Postby ScareyedHawk » Sun Dec 24, 2006 11:31 pm

I saw that for the first time a few days ago, except in the form of a jpg. I liked it.
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Postby Shwart!! » Mon Dec 25, 2006 1:23 am

When I get back on a nice ol' XP, I will make Shwart!!'s copywrighted 'Lol.' of greatness, but consider it presented now.

Shwart!!
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Postby KingAl » Mon Dec 25, 2006 1:28 am

Will this suffice?

Image
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Postby NeoThermic » Mon Dec 25, 2006 1:59 am

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Postby Shwart!! » Mon Dec 25, 2006 2:27 am

And two more lols. One for each of you.

I bet I'm the only 14-year-old named Tom on this forum that understands the theory of relativity.

Question...
Rocks A and B are traveling away from point C in opposite directions at 60% of the speed of light. However, since motion is relative, to rock A rock B is traveling at 6/5 the speed of light, and due to the TofR, must have exceeded infinite mass. Does the universe explode?

Shwart!!
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Postby DueAccident » Mon Dec 25, 2006 9:10 am

No, it implodes. Fool.
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Postby Slinken » Mon Dec 25, 2006 11:37 am

Santa exist! I met him yesterday. Too bad my dad had too go and buy the newpaper right then and didnt came back until Santa had gone away
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Postby sirvoks » Mon Dec 25, 2006 6:29 pm

Ah. I saw that somewhere on the internet half a month ago.
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Postby xander » Mon Dec 25, 2006 7:15 pm

jelco the galactaboy wrote:Uhm...

First time I heard that one was... five years ago?

Jelco

I believe that the original article was published in Spy magazine in 1990.

xander
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Postby prophile » Tue Dec 26, 2006 9:58 pm

But NeoThermic is Santa, as proved on IRC yesterday, and he's alive!
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Postby sirvoks » Tue Dec 26, 2006 10:34 pm

prophile wrote:But NeoThermic is Santa, as proved on IRC yesterday, and he's alive!


Evidence, thank you :)
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Postby prophile » Tue Dec 26, 2006 10:39 pm

Satan is an anagram of Santa. Now, another name for Satan is Lucifer - lightbringer, or the morning star. Jesus was also the morning star, therefore Jesus is Santa.

A quick glance at NickServ on irc.uplinkcorp.net reveals this:

Code: Select all

-NickServ-   Jesus is NeoThermic


Proof.

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