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Santa Claus

Started by clrscr Dec 23, 2001 at 10:16 AM 8 replies 850+ views

Original Post

Dec 23, 2001 at 10:16 AM

How fast would Santa have to go, to travel around the world in one night? Assuming he spends 5 minutes at every child''s house. "You can observe a lot just by watching."- Yogi Berra

Sand_Hawk

Dec 23, 2001 at 10:19 AM

Don''t you know? Santa can stop time! He stops time, go around the entire world, watch some porn movies and then resumes time!

Sand Hawk

Member of the Stupid Coders.
http://www.stupidcoders.cjb.net

-Earth is 98% full. Please delete anybody you can.

Santa Clause

Dec 23, 2001 at 11:59 AM

Well, I have a little secret...

That is, appear on multiple locations at once. This is too difficult for you filthy mortals to understand, so just be happy with your presents and let me and God do our job please

WayfarerX

Dec 23, 2001 at 1:37 PM

Ah-ha Santa, it''s a sham! I know the truth!

(I got this in my email a few days ago, not sure how old it is)

---------------

Does Santa Exist - An Engineers Proof

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 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 1/1000 th 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 eight 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 each adsorb 14.3 quintillion joules of energy per second. 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 on his trip.

Not that it matters, however, since Santa, as a result of accelerating from a dead stop to 650 m.p.s. in .001 seconds, would be subjected to acceleration forces of 17,000 g''s. A 250 pound Santa (which seems 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.

Conclusion: If Santa did exist, he''s dead now.

---------------

"So crucify the ego, before it''s far too late. To leave behind this place so negative and blind and cynical, and you will come to find that we are all one mind. Capable of all that''s imagined and all conceivable."
- Tool
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mse61

Dec 23, 2001 at 1:44 PM

I always wondered why there was a different looking Santa at the mall every year.

~mse61

"It''s a dog eat dog world and I''m wearing Milkbone underwear."

tuxx

Dec 23, 2001 at 4:13 PM

Obviously, Santa hasn''t told you guys himself. I had a visit with him just yesterday, and we were discussing the side effects of Figgy pudding and cookies, which results in massive gas. During the past few years, the reindeer have been attending posts all around the world, Blitzen being in the Midwest of the United States, so he''s the reindeer of the Midwest section, which is where I live (Milwaukee, Wisconsin). Santa keeps track of them via his new Sony Clie, which can display 65,356 (I''m not sure about the last three numbers) colors. He connects to a unified satelite, which orbits much further away from the Earth than others, because it has a special radar warper which hits the Earth and curves around it, effectively creating a massive forcefield of updates covering the Earth. The reindeer have also have a Sony Clie, but with special paw-buttons, making it easier for reindeer to push the buttons. When Santa sends them an email on Christmas Eve, he freezes time, and lets the reindeer deliver presents. During this time, Santa uses it to download the new Warez version of Quake 3, which on his old 56k during the time-freeze goes at about light speed. He can then challenge the Easter Bunny to a duel in Quake 3. The Easter Bunny, as he tells me, is a master of disquise, a born sniper in Quake, when Santa tends to clumsily walk around in the dark shooting everything. But, generally, the Easter Bunny gets caught in Santa''s line-of-fire. During this, the Easter Bunny charges Santa, and takes advantage of Santa''s roundness by rolling him into a circle filled with mines, which he blows up while Santa''s in the center. The Easter Bunny is generall victorious. Meanwhile, back on Earth, the reindeer have a program, written in C (some reindeer are trying to convince Santa to upgrade to C++), which tells them the presents to give. The reindeer''s flees wrap the presents, the elves make them, and the reindeer deliver them. They can slyly slide through the chimney. The reindeer then take the cookies and milk, and save them for Santa, because he charges a cookie tax. Rudolph, however, while taking care of North Africa, commonly eats the cookies himself, which results in Santa and him a duel in Quake 3.