[2314] in APO News
After the 6.001 exam
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (C.)
Wed Dec 18 17:01:10 1996
To: apo-pftgoto@MIT.EDU, fenwayhouse@MIT.EDU, the-valley@MIT.EDU
Date: Wed, 18 Dec 1996 16:58:56 EST
From: "C." <ajw@MIT.EDU>
After the 6.001 exam
noone deserves to believe in miracles, so....
-------------------------------------
(from an engineering standpoint)
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.
<<Are Santa and his reindeer Ancient Astronauts??>>
2) There are 378 million children for Santa to deliver to 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.
<<This assumes Santa only comes to the USA. Which he does not.>>
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 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 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.
<<This also means, thankfully, that Santa is NOT subject to Einsteinian
time dilation.>>
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, 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 tons. Again, for comparison
- - this is four times the weight of the Queen Elizabeth.
<<Anti-gravitic generators in the harnesses and the sleigh will do the
trick nicely.>>
5) 353,000 tons traveling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air
resistance - this will heat the reindeer up in the same fashion as
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.
<<And then there's inertial dampers...>>
In conclusion -
If Santa ever DID deliver presents on Christmas Eve, he's dead now.
<<No...it means his tech level is MUCH higher than Earth, 1996 A.D.>>
