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.

Humbug

Originally Posted by Law

5)... Santa, meanwhile, will be subjected to centrifugal forces 17,500.06 times greater than gravity....

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.

[the_lone_wolf]

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

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?

Originally Posted by the_lone_wolf

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

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?

No, but I found this on turning blue.

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

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

[the_lone_wolf]

Originally Posted by Law

No, but I found this on turning blue.

of course, that would explain it nicely...

Made me laugh!!

Originally Posted by Law

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.

How isn't it a real force?

Originally Posted by Flamin_Squirrel

How isn't it a real force?

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*