Christmas physics

[Fantasie117]

(My first thread! :D Warning: this is long, and I have no idea how long it took for me to type it. My dad's cousin gave it to me, but I've seen it someplace else. BTW, this pretty much destroys all dreams about Santa coming to visit. You have been warned.)

An Engineer's view of Christmas:

There are approximately two billion children (persons under 18) in the world. However, since Santa does not visit children of Muslim, Hindu, Jewish, or Buddhist (except maybe in Japan) 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 gifts 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 purpose of our calculations), we are 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 an hour. The payload of the sleigh adds another interesting element.

Assuming 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 granting 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 wieght of the sleigh, another 54,000 tons, or roughly seven times the weight of the Queen Elizabeth (the ship, not the monarch). 600,000 tons 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 second...each. In short, they would burst into flames almost instantaneously, exposing the reindeer behind and creating deafening sonic booms in their wake. The entire reindeer team would be vaporized within 4.26 thousandths of a second, or right about the time Santa reached the fifth house on this trip. Not that is matter, however, since Santa, as a result of accelerating from a dead stop to 650 m.p.s. 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.

Merry Christmas, everybody!

[Bird Boy]

Merry Christmas indeed..lol.

During the days when Santa was "Real"...I always thought that TIME didn't matter. That meant, while I slept, he went EVERYWHERE.....

Hmmm..anyway...interesting theory.. hehe

-BB

[Alaskanbullworm]

Are you saying Santa ISN'T real. I feel so abused. What next, you gonna say there's no Easter Bunny?

[pencilsharp]

Wait a sec... Isn't time supposed to be relative? Quantum theory supports the existence of "wormholes" (as any Trekkie/er worth his salt well knows! :rolleyes: ) which, quite simply, bend time and space. These are sort of like black holes, except that wormholes are self-contained and bend light instead of absorbing it. Since our measurement of time is based on the sun, and by extension the speed of the sun's light, a wormhole bends time, just as black holes are timeless, at least INSIDE the holes.
Theoretically, one (such as a certain "jolly old elf") could even travel back in time, as shown in the Back to the Future movies. Thus, not only could Santa make it everywhere around the world in one night, he could do it in one second. Furthermore, the distress this would probably place on his body would require the massive consumption of milk and cookies to replace calories burnt during transmissions.
The reindeer, I assume, are more for show.

Didn't know I had it in me, eh?
Or was this a rhetorical argument?

Whatever. :wakko:

[Fantasie117]

Originally posted by Pencilsharp:
Didn't know I had it in me, eh? Or was this a rhetorical argument?

It wasn't meant to be an argument. I didn't write it. It was just something I wanted to share with the posters here.

BTW, sorry to tell you like this, Patrick Star ;)

[Calhoun07]

December 24, 1999: On Christmas Eve, the Jolly Old Elf will brush the fireplace ash out of his beard, don his famous red suit, and begin the serious work of delivering presents all over the world. It's a job he's done in the same way for a long, long time, but times may be changing. As humans and space probes travel to other worlds, the possibility of Christmas on other planets can no longer be ignored, and the prospect of delivering presents throughout the solar system is, well, turning Santa's hair white.

In an exclusive interview, Science@NASA visited Santa Claus at his secret North Pole workshop. He took a break from final preparations to talk about how he'll maintain his legendary delivery system as humankind inhabits other worlds.

"The Moon won't be too much of a challenge," Santa told us. "I figure the lunar colonies will keep Earth time, so I'll just add them to my route. The reindeer will gripe about having to put on spacesuits, but we'll get used to it."

"Mars is going to start to stretch us a bit. See, it takes 687 days to go around the Sun. That's about two of our Earth years. So every other year I'll have two Christmas runs to make, the Earth-Moon run and the Mars run. We'll really have to 'haul Rudolph,' as the reindeer are fond of saying. Fortunately, a Martian day is 37 minutes longer than an Earth day, so we can still do our usual overnight delivery. Some of the planets have much shorter days than Earth! One thing that will help is NASA's new 3D maps of Mars. It's hard to get lost with that kind of data! ... Excuse me a moment."


"I worry about the elves," Santa continued. "They count on a slack period to fix the factory and invent new toys for next year. I'll have to hire more helpers if we're going to service the Moon and Mars, too."

What about the other planets?

"Well, I've given them some thought", explained Santa. "Take Venus, for example. It's a tough environment - high temperatures, and a thick, choking carbon dioxide atmosphere. Plus, the clouds are made of sulfuric acid. Talk about air pollution. Venus circles the sun every 224 days, so Christmas will come about every eight Earth months. That's a little more often than we're used to here on Earth, but it'll be easy to deliver all the presents in one night. Venus's day is 243 times longer than ours. I'll have all the time in the world - their world - to deliver. Everyone gets their presents on the same day, no matter when I deliver. Ho, ho, ho! It also spins the wrong way, I hope that doesn't make the reindeer sick!"

"Now, the closest planet to the Sun is Mercury," he went on, wagging his finger. Santa really knew a lot about the solar system.

"You'd think that Mercury would be the hottest planet, but Venus is actually a little warmer because of the greenhouse effect in its carbon dioxide atmosphere. That's not to say Mercury isn't hot -- it's scorching! Daytime temperatures reach 500 degrees C. The appealing thing about Mercury, at least for the kids, is that the planet's year is just 88 Earth days long. Imagine that! Christmas every 88 days. It's a bit too often if you ask me, but that's gravity for you."

Santa paused for a moment.

"Jupiter's the big challenge. If we actually build colonies on that planet, I'll have less than 10 hours to deliver everything. Nine hours and 55 minutes, to be exact. The giant planet is 11 times wider than Earth, but it rotates more than twice as fast!"

"Jupiter doesn't have a solid surface, so any future colonies will probably be suspended in the clouds. Jupiter's atmosphere is made of hydrogen, helium, methane, and ammonia. It's pretty toxic but not nearly as bad as Venus's atmosphere. We'll need special protective suits for both planets, which is bad news because the reindeer hate wearing anything besides bells."

"Jupiter is so far away I think I'll turn Europa, the third largest moon, into a branch office. It's entirely covered with ice, just like the North Pole here on Earth, so the elves would feel right at home."

"Of course we'll probably steer clear of Europa's neighbor Io," continued Santa. "Did you catch the latest Galileo images? Superheated lava pools, volcanoes erupting all over. It's not exactly the North Pole, if you know what I mean. Actually there is some snow on Io but it's all made of smelly sulfur compounds."

Santa paused again to initial some requisitions for spare parts for the sled.

"You know, it's a shame that Saturn is so far away," he went on wistfully. "What a lovely planet.... I'd love to cruise around those rings in my sleigh. But it's 9.5 times farther from the sun than Earth. It'll be a while before we have colonies out there," he opined.

"Uranus and Neptune are just the same. Pretty planets, nice gas giants, but very far away. Uranus has some pretty nasty storms, by the way -- have you seen those Space Telescope pictures?" he asked. "Mrs Claus says they're even better than the Weather Channel!"

"Now just suppose I was way out there at Uranus delivering toys, and I was ready to fly home. Uranus is 19 times farther from the sun than our planet. Do you realize it'll take almost 7 hours for me to radio a message back home? I always send Mrs. Claus a message to start warming up the hot cocoa, just before I head back to the North Pole. Why, I'll be home before the message arrives!" he exclaimed.

Did that mean that Santa can travel faster than light? Wouldn't that violate the laws of physics? Before we could pursue this amazing revelation, the Jolly Old Elf's face brightened, and he went on:

"Pluto... now that's the one that really interests me. It's the most distant planet by far, 39 times farther from the Sun than Earth. It takes 247 Earth years to go around the Sun just once. Think of it -- only one Christmas every 247 years! Plenty of time to retool between holidays. And the Plutonian day lasts six Earth days and 18 hours. I could really take my time delivering gifts. Not that it would take long anyway. Pluto's the tiniest planet in the solar system. Why, some people claim it's not a planet at all. Silly, that's what I say...of course it's a planet!"

"Pluto's got real possibilities," he warmed to his theme. "I say we've got to hurry up with planetary exploration. Mars tomorrow, then Jupiter and onward to Pluto! Once we get to Pluto, I might just set up shop there and the human race can keep my calendar. Christmas once every 247 years. That might make things a bit easier - I'm not as young as I once was...." Santa looked thoughtful.


Christmas only once every 247 years? Was Santa serious? Suddenly an impish smile crossed his face. "Now how many children would stand for Christmas once every 247 years?" he asked with a twinkle in his eye. "I suppose we'll just have to keep doing it once a year as always."

Just then Mrs. Claus quietly appeared from the kitchen and thrust a bag of cookies into our hands.

"You really must go, dears," she said. "He has a long night ahead of him, after all." We went to the front door and bade our farewells. The stars shone brightly in the clear Arctic sky. As we turned to our dog sleds to begin our journey home, we heard Santa's voice boom from within: "Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!"

[DerekPowers]

Originally posted by pencilsharp
Wait a sec... Isn't time supposed to be relative? Quantum theory supports the existence of "wormholes" (as any Trekkie/er worth his salt well knows! :rolleyes: ) which, quite simply, bend time and space. \

yeah, any trekkie, or better yet, any btas fan whos seen "time out of joint" should have a nice general knowledge of einstien's relativity theory and time travel. hehe. peace.