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Santa Works Hard!!
The analysis calculates that there are possibly 378 million children in the world; at just over 4.1 per household, that's 98.1 million homes. "One presumes that there's at least one good child in each".
Time zones give Santa 31 hours of Christmas to work with, which means 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 his sleigh, fill the stockings ... [and] get back into
the sleigh."
The sleigh itself would have to travel at 3,000 times the speed of sound, 650 miles per second. "[The] fastest man made vehicle ... the Ulysses space probe, moves at a pokey
27.4 miles per second." The sleigh's payload - assuming nothing more than a medium-sized Lego set, weighing 2 lbs, is 321,300 tons and, even if flying reindeer have 10 times the
pulling power of an ordinary reindeer, he will need 214,000 of the beasts.
Finally, "353,000 tons, travelling at 650 miles per second, creates enormous air resistance ... the lead pair of reindeer (you know, Rudolph and chum) will absorb 14.3 quintillion joules
of energy ... per second ... each. In short, they will burst into flames almost instantaneously". Santa's whole flying circus would burn up, like a spacecraft re-entering the atmosphere.
"In conclusion: If Santa ever did deliver presents on Christmas Eve .. he's dead now!!"
[Edited by david a on 12-09-2000 at 02:32 AM]
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