[Dixielandjazz] Bah humbug

[Bill Gunter]

Using science to study magic seems odd.

Bill Gunter
jazzboard at hotmail.com


>From: Russ Guarino <russg at redshift.com>
>To: stridepiano at tesco.net
>CC: DJML <dixielandjazz at ml.islandnet.com>
>Subject: Re: [Dixielandjazz] Bah humbug
>Date: Fri, 16 Dec 2005 12:01:56 -0800
>
>After reading John's scientific study,  I conclude there must be more than
>one Santa.
>
>Russ Guarino
>
>John Farrell wrote:
>
> > While you are all tooting away at your Yuletide gigs consider this :
> >
> > I. 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 religions, this reduces the workload for
> > Christmas Night to 15% of the total, or 378 million - according to the
> > Population Bureau.
> >
> > At an average (census) rate of 3.5
> > children per household, that comes to 108 million homes, assuming that
> > there is at least one good child in each.
> >
> > II. Santa has about 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 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 stockings, distribute the remaining
> > presents under the tree, eat whatever snacks have been left for him, get
> > back up the chimney, jump into the sleigh and get on to the next house.
> > Assuming that each of these 108 million stops is evenly distributed
> > around the world (which, of course, I know to be false, but will accept
> > for the purpose of my calculations), we are now 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 per hour.
> >
> > III. The payload of the sleigh adds another interesting element.
> > Assuming that each child gets nothing more than a medium sized Lego set
> > (two pounds), the sleigh is carrying over 500,000 tons, not counting
> > Santa himself. On land, a conventional reindeer can pull no more than
> > 300 pounds. Even granting that the "flying" reindeer could pull ten
> > times the normal amount, the job can't be done with eight or even nine
> > of them - Santa would need 360,000. This increases the payload,
> > not counting the weight of the sleigh, by another 54,000 tons, or
> > roughly seven times the weight of the Queen Elizabeth (the ship, not the
> > monarch).
> >
> > IV. 600,000 tons traveling 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 them and creating deafening sonic booms in their wake.
> > The entire reindeer team would be vaporized within 0.00426 seconds, or
> > right about the time Santa reached the fifth house on his trip. Not
> > that it matters, however, since Santa, as a result of accelerating from
> > a dead stop to 650 MPS in 0.001 seconds, would be subjected to an
> > inertial force of 17,500 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 puddle of pink goo.
> >
> > V. Therefore, if Santa did exist, he's dead now.
> >
> > Season's Greetings,
> >
> > John Farrell
> > http://homepages.tesco.net/~stridepiano/midifiles.htm
> >
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>
>
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