[Looks like this engineer had nothing better to do with his time, so he came
up with a mathematical proof for the non-existence of 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 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 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 travelling 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.
In conclusion - If Santa ever DID deliver presents on Christmas Eve, he’s dead now.
The best proof of love is trust. - Joyce Brothers
Baking is science for hungry people. - Unknown
Architecture begins where engineering ends. - Walter Gropius
Fame is proof that the people are gullible. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
A turkey never voted for an early Christmas. - Unknown
Death and taxes are unsolved engineering problems. - Romana Machado
All science is either physics or stamp collecting. - Ernest Rutherford
I get really grinchy right up until Christmas morning. - Dan Aykroyd
Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy. - Benjamin Franklin
Halloween starts earlier and earlier, just like Christmas. - Robert Englund
Management is a practice where art, science, and craft meet. - Henry Mintzberg
Santa Claus has the right idea. Visit people only once a year. - Victor Borge
We can lick gravity, but sometimes the paperwork is overwhelming. - Wernher von Braun
I now touch nothing stronger than buttermilk: 90-proof buttermilk. - WC Fields
Tenderness is greater proof of love than the most passionate of vows. - Marlene Dietrich
I have the proof, but there isn't room to write it in the margin. - Unknown
It is through science that we prove, but through intuition that we discover. - Jules Henri Poincare
No science is immune to the infection of politics and the corruption of power. - Jacob Bronowski
Mail your packages early, so the Post Office can lose them in time for Christmas. - Johnny Carson
The main reason Santa is so jolly is because he knows where all the bad girls live. - George Carlin
If you thought before that science was certain - well, that is just an error on your part. - Richard P Feynman
There's a big overlap with the people you meet at the fantasy and science fiction cons. - Fred Saberhagen
The Bermuda Triangle got tired of warm weather. It moved to Alaska. Now Santa Claus is missing. - Steven Wright
Science is angling in the mud - angling for immortality and for anything else that may turn up. - Aldous Huxley
I still have my Christmas Tree. I looked at it today. Sure enough, I couldn't see any forests. - Steven Wright
The best of all gifts around any Christmas tree: the presence of a family all wrapped up in each other. - Bill Vaughan
'Healing,' Papa would tell me, 'is not a science, but the intuitive art of wooing nature.' - W H Auden
Advertising may be described as the science of arresting human intelligence long enough to get money from it. - Stephen Leacock
We've arranged a civilization in which most crucial elements profoundly depend on science and technology. - Carl Sagan
Might make a real good Christmas present for the uninformed. The book is called 'Taking America Back.' - Paul Harvey
In the sick room, ten cents' worth of human understanding equals ten dollars' worth of medical science. - Martin H. Fischer
Statistics: the only science that enables different experts using the same figures to draw different conclusions. - Evan Esar
Mathematics is the only science where one never knows what one is talking about nor whether what is said is true. - Bertrand Russell
A lovely thing about Christmas is that it's compulsory, like a thunderstorm, and we all go through it together. - Garrison Keillor
Science is a first-rate piece of furniture for a man’s upper chamber, if he has common sense on the ground floor. - Oliver Wendell Holmes
In the choice between changing one's mind and proving there's no need to do so, most people get busy on the proof. - John Kenneth Galbraith
Did you read about Starbucks? No more "Merry Christmas" at Starbucks. No more. Maybe we should boycott Starbucks. - Donald Trump
I read recipes the same way I read science fiction. I get to the end and I think, "Well, that's not going to happen." - Unknown
Whenever you are embarrassed, just remember that in 1999 NASA destroyed a $655 Million project because the engineers mistook kilograms and pounds. - Unknown
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12-Aug-2020 |