Ok, A friend of mine at Tektronix sent me this one :) Think about it... but don't show it to anyone under age 8 :) hehehe Art "I still say there is a Santa...hehehe" Bahrs > 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 anoint, 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 > 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.