picky33 nonsence blog

There are approximately two billion children (personsunder 18) in theworld. However, since Santa does not visit children ofMuslim, Hindu,Jewish or Buddhist (except maybe in Japan) religions,this reduces theworkload for Christmas night to 15% of the total, or378 million(according to the population reference bureau). At anaverage (census)rate of 3.5 children per household, that comes to 108million homes,presuming there is at least one good child in each.Santa has about 31 hours of Christmas to work with,thanks to thedifferent time zones and the rotation of the earth,assuming east towest (which seems logical). This works out to 967.7visits per second.This is to say that for each Christian household witha good child,Santa has around 1/1000th of a second to park thesleigh, hop out,jump down the chimney, fill the stockings, distributethe remainingpresents under the tree, eat whatever snacks have beenleft for him,get back up the chimney, jump into the sleigh and getonto the nexthouse.Assuming that each of these 108 million stops isevenly distributedaround the earth (which, of course, we know to befalse, but willaccept for the purposes of our calculations), we arenot talking about0.78 miles per household; a total trip of 75.5 millionmiles, notcounting bathroom stops or breaks.This means Santa's sleigh is moving at 650 miles persecond--3,000times the speed of sound. For purposes of comparison,the fastest manmade vehicle, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a poky27.4 miles persecond, and a conventional reindeer can run (at best)15 miles perhour. The payload of the sleigh adds anotherinteresting element.Assuming that each child gets nothing more than amedium sized LEGOset (two pounds), the sleigh is carrying over 500thousand tons, notcounting Santa himself. On land, a conventionalreindeer can pull nomore than 300 pounds. Even granting that "flyingreindeer can pull 10times the normal amount, the job can't be done witheight or even nineof them---Santa would need 360,000 of them. Thisincreases thepayload, not counting the weight of the sleigh,another 54,000 tons,or roughly seven times the weight of the QueenElizabeth (the ship,not the monarch).A mass of nearly 600,000 tons traveling at 650 milesper secondcreates enormous air resistance -- this would heat upthe reindeer inthe same fashion as a spacecraft re-entering theearth's atmosphere.The lead pair of reindeer would absorb 14.3quintillion joules ofenergy per second each. In short, they would burstinto flames almostinstantaneously, exposing the reindeer behind them andcreatingdeafening sonic booms in their wake. The entirereindeer team would bevaporized within 4.26 thousandths of a second, orright about the timeSanta reaches the fifth house on his trip. Not that itmatters,however, since Santa, as a result of accelerating froma dead stop to650 m.p.s. in .001 seconds, would be subjected toacceleration forcesof 17,000 g's.A 250 pound Santa (which seems ludicrously slimconsidering all thehigh calorie snacks he must have consumed over theyears) would bepinned to the back of the sleigh by 4,315,015 poundsof force,instantly crushing his bones and organs and reducinghim to aquivering blob of pink goo. Therefore, if Santa didexist, he's deadnow. MERRY CHISTMAS!!!

here is the pic to my charred dirt shirt idea

http://home.comcast.net/~picky33/SHIRT.JPE