Santa Physics, Don't read if you still believe!
 

I got reminded of this by a post in the ghost thread

THE "SANTA PHYSICS" PROPOSAL:

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 spacecraft 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.

Anyway I never believed he was real, mainly because I don't ever remember my family pretending he was real.

Re: Santa Physics, Don't read if you still believe!
 

Humbug

Re: Santa Physics, Don't read if you still believe!
 

Just reread through it properly. Centrifugal isn't a real force! The whole argument has been undermined!

Oh wait, I can just change that to centripetal.

Re: Santa Physics, Don't read if you still believe!
 

i have to admit i made an assumption as to santa's blu hue --> :bigsmurf:

can anyone show if the thermodynamic effects that allow heat transfer from a hotter body to a cooler one continue to work if the velocity differential between the two is greater than c?

:study:

Re: Santa Physics, Don't read if you still believe!
 

No, but I found this on turning blue.:colors:

children will notice that as Rudolph, Santa’s lead reindeer, is rushing toward their homes, his nose is no longer red. The color depends on just how fast Rudolph is moving, turning yellow, then green, then blue, then violet, and finally turning invisible in the ultraviolet range as he accelerates to higher and higher speeds. This change in color is a well-known phenomenon, called the Doppler shift, which astronomers take advantage of to figure out the speeds with which the stars and galaxies in our expanding universe are moving with respect to us; from that information, the distances to these celestial objects can be deduced. Using the accompanying table, children can determine how fast Rudolph is traveling by noting the color of his nose.


Color of Rudolph’s nose: Red Yellow Green Blue Violet
Corresponding wavelength (in nanometers):650 580 550 480 400
Santa’s speed as a percentageof the speed of light (v/c)*:0 11 17 29 45

Re: Santa Physics, Don't read if you still believe!
 

Nnnnnnooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!. .......... *wails*

:cry:










:lol:

Re: Santa Physics, Don't read if you still believe!
 

of course, that would explain it nicely...

Re: Santa Physics, Don't read if you still believe!
 

Made me laugh!!

Re: Santa Physics, Don't read if you still believe!
 

How isn't it a real force?

Re: Santa Physics, Don't read if you still believe!
 

Dunno, I just remember my physics teacher going on at me that centrifrugal force was actually a mixture of two forces or something... but then I got distracted by... *eyes glaze over*

Re: Santa Physics, Don't read if you still believe!
 

But he's magic.........and assisted by the ghosts of his Forefather Christmas's.

also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centrifugal_force

Re: Santa Physics, Don't read if you still believe!
 

At any other time of year a fat old man dressed in fancy dress, who has children sit on his lap for photo's and then delivers presents to these children in the middle of the night, would be considered to be something completely different!

Oh, and don't even get me started on the easter bunny!!!

Re: Santa Physics, Don't read if you still believe!
 

You never got visited Law? Must of been a naughty child, shame on you.

Santa upgraded a while ago to the back to the future DeLorean car and so using time travel he can easily do the allotted runs...

Re: Santa Physics, Don't read if you still believe!
 

How much is a qintillion (i.e. 10^x...what is x?)

Matt

Re: Santa Physics, Don't read if you still believe!
 

I see how nobody has yet to reply to you lol,, maybe 4*10^900 maybe?

Re: Santa Physics, Don't read if you still believe!
 

10^18

Re: Santa Physics, Don't read if you still believe!
 

Every year these "facts" get trotted out earlier and earlier...

Re: Santa Physics, Don't read if you still believe!
 

Theres not really any "force" pushing you to the outside of a curve, there's just your inertia which is directed at a tangent to the curve.

But why would centripetal forces come into it at all? I think they are really on about the forces of acceleration as santa accelerates to 650 miles per second.

Reindeer are old hat though, he uses atomic badgers these days.

Re: Santa Physics, Don't read if you still believe!
 

St Peter was a rabbit, that's why we have easter bunnies! o(><)o

Are they 6ft?

Re: Santa Physics, Don't read if you still believe!
 

They were, but due to the expanding population they are now nearly 8 feet long, but much more streamlined.

Re: Santa Physics, Don't read if you still believe!
 

XKCD cartoon, lol.

http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/centrifugal_force.png

Re: Santa Physics, Don't read if you still believe!
 

Keep Mrs24_7 away from this thread she'll get all confused with talk of 8ft badgers!

Re: Santa Physics, Don't read if you still believe!
 

too late! :smt081

Re: Santa Physics, Don't read if you still believe!
 

Have you not seen my sig? :twisted:

Re: Santa Physics, Don't read if you still believe!
 

8ft atomic badgers!

Re: Santa Physics, Don't read if you still believe!
 

This is all a conspiracy theory put together by the JW's.

A small glass of sherry, mince pie and a carrot for Rudolph will be placed as usual on xmas eve.;)