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Author Topic: An Engineering take on Christmas  (Read 1992 times)

Offline damoegan

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An Engineering take on Christmas
« on: January 01, 2011, 05:16:01 pm »
 :santa:

Quote
There are approximately two billion children (persons under 18) in the world. However, since Santa does not usually visit children of Muslim, indu, 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 1/1000th 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 pay load 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 thousand tons, not counting Santa himself.

On land, a conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds.

Even granted 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 weight of the Queen Elizabeth (the ship that is, not Brenda). 600,000 tones travelling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance- this would heat up the reindeer in the same fashion as a spacecraft re-entering the earth’s atmosphere.

The lead pair of reindeer would absorb 14.3 quintillion joules of energy per seconds each. 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 vaporised 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 miles per second 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.

Therefore, if Santa did exist, he’s dead now kids.

Offline Janner_Sy

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Re: An Engineering take on Christmas
« Reply #1 on: January 01, 2011, 05:30:37 pm »
very good :congrats:

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Re: An Engineering take on Christmas
« Reply #2 on: January 01, 2011, 07:28:48 pm »
BAH HUMBUG.  :grin:

Offline MAT ED30

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Re: An Engineering take on Christmas
« Reply #3 on: January 01, 2011, 07:37:45 pm »
Maybe Santa can slow time  :P that's the magic of him  :santa:

Mods yes but way too many to stick in this little box

Offline Hedge

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Re: An Engineering take on Christmas
« Reply #4 on: January 01, 2011, 08:24:22 pm »
Maybe Santa can slow time  :P that's the magic of him  :santa:

No Santa drives an .:R32.  :santa:  :laugh:

Offline stealthwolf

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Re: An Engineering take on Christmas
« Reply #5 on: January 01, 2011, 10:09:10 pm »
Old but still funny.

Yes - santa uses magic to make everything possible.

The GTI isn't just a machine. It's very much a living, breathing thing.

Offline Janner_Sy

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Re: An Engineering take on Christmas
« Reply #6 on: January 01, 2011, 10:12:05 pm »
Maybe Santa can slow time  :P that's the magic of him  :santa:

No Santa drives an .:R32.  :santa:  :laugh:

we need to increase the weight used in the calculations then

Offline parks

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Re: An Engineering take on Christmas
« Reply #7 on: January 01, 2011, 10:25:38 pm »
360,000 reindeer would be cheaper to run than an R32
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Offline vRS Carl

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Re: An Engineering take on Christmas
« Reply #8 on: January 01, 2011, 10:30:24 pm »
Very good  :congrats:

Offline Hedge

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Re: An Engineering take on Christmas
« Reply #9 on: January 01, 2011, 11:15:57 pm »
 :sad1:

Offline bondy

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Re: An Engineering take on Christmas
« Reply #10 on: January 02, 2011, 09:55:52 am »
 :grin:

Offline Snoopy

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Re: An Engineering take on Christmas
« Reply #11 on: January 02, 2011, 12:17:57 pm »
I work with people who think and write that sort of stuff, sad really. :santa:
Ex mk5 GTI owner, moved to a mk6 in 2010.

Offline Golfgirl

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Re: An Engineering take on Christmas
« Reply #12 on: January 13, 2011, 12:39:18 pm »
Very good :grin:

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