Miata Mailing List: December 1993, Message #117
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   From: suskind@isdev1.melpar.esys.com (Barry A. Suskind)
Subject: RE: Is there a Santa Claus?
   Date: Wed, 15 Dec 1993 16:10:17 -0500

["craig" ] Writes:
> 
> 
> ------- Forwarded Message Follows -------
> 
> Got this over the airwaves, from colleagues in WDC.  Forgive me if
> this doesn't have anything to do with a Miata.  Probably even the
> Mega Monster Miata couldn't keep up with this.  But, what with the
> season and all...
> 
> craig blakely
> 
> 
> ==================== IS THERE A SANTA CLAUS? ====================
> 
> 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.
> 
> 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 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.
> 
> 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.
> 
> 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 a
> spacecraft reentering 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's dead now.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ********************************
> Craig Blakely, Assoc. Director
> Public Policy Research Institute
> H.C. Dulie Bell Bldg. / Suite 314
> Texas A&M University
> College Station, TX  77843-4476
> (409) 845-8800
> CRAIG@PPRI.TAMU.EDU
> 
> 
> 

All this is fine craig. But you seem to forget that maybe, just maybe we
have not got all of Physics down correctly. You give way to the fact that
maybe we have not discovered flying reindeer. Well we have not discovered
faster than light travel or matter-energy conversion either. If these were
only known to Santa then there is no problem even delivering miata's to EVERY
child on the earth, including those that are not Chistian and would be in the
85% of those that Santa does not deliver too. I for one am Jewish and celbrate
Hannukah, which puts me in your 85% that will only get Pizza delivered by
Dominoes on Christmas.  However, after reading your mail you will probably
get coal.


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