Yes, it's the holiday season again and time to prove once again "why Santa is deaddue to the laws of physics" post! Enjoy!

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.

3) 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.

[This message has been edited by Evil_Tofu (edited December 01, 2003).]

Obviously magic is the only possible explanation.

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Kilroy Was Here

Just out of curiosity, in order to calculate the energy the reindeer would absorb... does that mean someone did an aerodynamic analysis of reindeer?

Flexor is quite right. Canadians are able to stop time, teleport objects, and we've had plasma-shielded flying reindeer for some time now.

[This message has been edited by Jon`C (edited December 01, 2003).]

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.

Have you ever seen a million dollars? Just because you haven't seen it, doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

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.

Whoever said santa only gives presents to christian kids?

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.

Santa lives in the north pole. The north pole belongs to canada, thus, santa is canadian. Canadians have the ability to stop time.

3) 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.

What we mere humans can achieve as a species is irrelevant. Santa claus is clearly a superior being who's methods are too great for your puny little mind to comprehend.

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.

Teleportation technology anyone? SHEESH!

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.

Santa's sleigh has plasma shields... and so do the reindeer... in fact, they're SUPERreindeer... so... yeah..

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When bread becomes toast, it can never go back to being bread again.

Brain of Brian rules all.

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Signatures are overrated.

"You can run but you will only die tired."

Rebuttal: Several key points are overlooked by this callous, amateurish "study."

1) Flying reindeer
First, as admitted, it is possible that a flying reindeer can be found. I would agree that it would be quite an unusual find, but they might exist.
Second, as is widely known (due to the excellent historical documentary "Santa Claus is Coming to Town," the flying reindeer are not a previously unknown species of reindeer, but were in fact given the power of flight due to eating magic acorns. As is conclusively proven in "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" (a no punches pulled look at life in Santa's village), this ability has bred true in subsequent generations of reindeer - obviously the magic acorns imprinted their power on a dominant gene sequence within the reindeer DNA strand.

2) Number of households
This figure overlooks several key facts. First of all, the first major schism in the Church split the Eastern Churches, centered in Byzantium, from the Western, which remained centered in Rome. This occurred prior to the Gregorian correction to the Julian calendar. The Eastern churches (currently called Orthodox Churches) do not recognize the Gregorian correction for liturgical events, and their Christmas is as a result several days after the Western Churches. So Santa gets two shots at delivering toys.
Secondly, the figure of 3.5 children per household is based on the gross demographic average, which includes households with no children at all. The number of children per household, when figured as an average for households with children, would therefore have to be adjusted upward. Also, the largest single Christian denomination is Roman Catholic, who, as we all know, breed like rabbits. Due to the predominance of Catholics within Christian households, the total number of households containing Christian children would have to be adjusted downward to reflect the overloading of Catholics beyond a standard deviation from the median.
Third, the assertion that each home would contain at least one good child would be reasonable enough if there were in fact an even 3.5 children per household. However, since the number of children per household is distributed integrally, there are a significant number (on the order of several million) of one child Christian households. Even though only children are notoriously spoiled and therefore disproportionately inclined towards being naughty, since it's the holidays we'll be generous and give them a fifty-fifty chance of being nice. This removes one half of the single child households from Santa's delivery schedule, which has already been reduced by the removal of the Orthodox households from the first delivery run. Alternately, what if anti-selection applies, and homes with good kids tend to have more than their share of good kids, and other homes have nothing except terrorists in diapers? Let's drop that number of homes down a few more percent.
Fourth, this analysis has relied on a uniform distribution of children across homes. Toronto/Yorkville, or Toronto/Cabbagetown, or other yuppie neighbourhoods, have probably less than the average (and don't forget the DINK and SINK homes (Double Income No Kids, Single Income No Kids)), while the families with 748 starving children that they keep showing on Vision TV while trying to pick our pockets would skew that 15% of homes down a few percent.
Fifth, Santa would have to Fedex a number of packages ahead of time, since he would not be able to fly into Air Force Bases, or into tower-controlled areas near airports. He's get shot at over certain sections of the Middle East, and the no-fly zones in Iraq, so he'd probably use DHL there. Subtract some more homes.
So the number of homes Santa needs to visit is substantially reduced from the initial estimate.

3) Santa's delivery run
These all suffer from the dubious supposition that there is only one Santa Claus. The name "Santa" is obviously either Spanish or Italian, two ethnic groups which are both overwhelmingly Catholic. The last name Claus suggests a joint German/Italian background. His beginnings, battling the Burgermeister Meisterburger, suggest he grew up in Bavaria (also predominantly Catholic). The Kaiser style helmets of the Burgermeister's guards, coupled with the relative isolation of the village, suggest that his youth was at the very beginning of Prussian influence in Germany. Thus, Santa and Mrs. Claus have been together for well over one hundred years. If you think that after a hundred years of living at the North Pole with nights six months long that they remain childless, you are insane. There have therefore been over five generations of Clauses, breeding for over one hundred years. Since they are Catholic, their exponential population increase would obviously have a gain higher than the world population as a whole. There have therefore been more than enough new Santas to overcome the population increase of the world. So in fact, Santa has an easier time of it now than he did when he first started out.
As to speed, Einsteinian Theory that says time does strange things as you move faster. In fact, when you go faster than the speed of light time runs backward, if you do a straight line projection, connect the dots and just ignore any singularity you might find right at the speed of light. So Santa could go faster than light, visit all the good children which are not uniformly distributed by either concentration in each home or by number of children per household, and get home before he left so he can digest all those stale cookies and warm milk.
But Santa only has reindeer, so where does he get the power to move that fast? You calculated the answer! The lead pair of reindeer will absorb 14.3 QUINTILLION joules of energy. Per second. Each. This is an ample supply of energy for the maneuvering, acceleration, etc, that would be required of the loaded sleigh. The reindeer don't evaporate or incinerate because of this energy, they accelerate. What do you think they have antlers for, fighting over females? Think of antlers as furry solar array panels.

Santa dead, indeed - some people will twist any statistic to "prove" their cynical theory.

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Whew...that took a while to type....or not Anyone else got any google comebacks, eh? EH? Thought not. Don't mess with Santa.

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Cantina Cloud | BCF | The Massassian
Corrupting the kiddies since '97

Freaking. Hilarious.



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"Church, women are like Voltron, the more you can hook up, the better it gets!"
-Tucker
Red vs Blue

There is a video (or was it just an audio-file?) around of some students who calculate all that in front of an audience. It's hilarious.

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Sorry for the lousy English

I think you should exclude Christians too - it is called CHRISTmas, after all. We are too contend with the celebrating of the birth of God's son than to give any thought to Santa Claus. Santa Claus is more of a Catholic figure because of St. Nichalos and no - Christians and Catholics are NOT the same thing. Catholics are religous. Christians are not.

-- SavageX

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"...and if you don't like that, then you need to be slugged in the face repeatedly, until my hands are soaked in blood. Have a nice day!"
http://www.savagex.net

Dude, that's just not true. Lots of Christians are religious. There are plenty of Baptist, Episcopalians, etc (the list goes on and on) who are very relgious.

And just for clarification, all Catholics are Christian, not all Chritians are Catholics

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I'm not an actor. I just play one on TV.

Oh dear mighty god of sliced pineapples make this not turn into a religious debate.

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When bread becomes toast, it can never go back to being bread again.

I was under the impression that Savage was joking...

And those are great. And you people are freaks. ;-)

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Frightening the very small and very old since 1952.

You really have no idea how bleeding old that thnig is, or how many times its been posted here, do you?

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Fight the future.

Spoilsport.

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The Massassi-Map
There is no spoon.

Santa won't be delivering presents this year. The elves all formed a union and now the North pole is falling apart as angry elves demand more pay for working in those child labor factories.

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What if one morning you woke up and realized that JED never existed and there never was such a thing as www.massassi.net? What would you do? Where would you go...?

[This message has been edited by Axis (edited December 02, 2003).]

Catholics are Christian, period.

I'm going to leave it at that because I don't want to be starting a religious debate.

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<scribbly handwriting barely resembling name>

.....SANTA ISN'T REAL!!!!


*runs*

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Signatures are overrated.

"You can run but you will only die tired."

I don't see how Santa can deliver the list any year when he's got the of naughty girls in his hand.

Don't see the big deal over Mrs. Claus, he could bring her along for a menage a trois.

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"We came, we saw, we conquered, we...woke up!"

Hahahaha.

= Bad indigestion.


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"This hole is octogo. Ogiganeel. It's Octa.. It's got eight sides."
"We interrupt this program again, A. to annoy you, and B. to provide work for one of our announcers."

Three words..

I.
Love.
Massassi.

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Happy "Diseased" dud: You said I'd be like this guy. Boycotting everything..
Happy "Diseased" dud: ted kazcnisky. That's who it was.
Happy "Diseased" dud: Wait, That's the unibomer.
Happy "Diseased" dud: Wrong guy.

They are smart in Spain. They have three dudes/kings coming aound giving gifts. It kinda lightens up the workload.

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"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." - Edmund Burke

"Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right." -Isaac Asimov

Never tickle the third foot!

Man, when I first read that I didn't see the Queen Elizabeth, just Queen Elizabeth. Had no idea she weighed so much.


[This message has been edited by Masq (edited December 02, 2003).]

Yeah, it's like those cursed Christmas Carrols. Why do they seem to play them EVERY YEAR?? I'VE ALREADY HEARD THEM!!

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Do you have stairs in your house?

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Most people regard me as the dark and immoral side of Massassi. At least I'm getting what I want out of life.

All Neo did is take Santa's idea and expand upon it, and throw a bit of Kung Fu in the mix. He has the whole flying at warp speed down pat.

Anyways, count on Massassi to turn a funny article into a religious debate. Only at Massassi.

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"The future is not determined by a throw of the dice, but is determined by the conscious decisions of you and me."
I am addicted to ellipses!!! AHHH!!! ...

May the jury note the italisized text? Thank you.

*sniff* God bless you Flexor Flexington... God bless you.

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June 16 - A night to remember
Ex-Council of 14
Miken
"The problem with America is stupidity. I'm not saying there should be a capital punishment for stupidity, but why don't we just take the safety labels off everything and let the problem solve itself?"

The "North Pole", as you call is, is not a land mass at all, it's just some ice floating on top of the Arctic Ocean. This is why Antarctica (which has actual land under the ice) is a land mass. Thus, no one can own a floating piece of ice. Canada loses!

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1 of 14 - The Coucil still lives
6-16 Never Forget.
Click.
People I don't like: FeTT, Pugler

Shhh...let the Canadian's own their floating ice, they're not hurting anyone.

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Roach - Pendulum stops and falls away. Life sifted through like sand.

0 of 14.

What about all that tundra and crap, with the caribouses or whatever?

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June 16 - A night to remember
Ex-Council of 14
Miken
"The problem with America is stupidity. I'm not saying there should be a capital punishment for stupidity, but why don't we just take the safety labels off everything and let the problem solve itself?"

[This message has been edited by Mikus (edited December 02, 2003).]

Geez...
For people that come *daily* (most likely) to a website, about a game which has nothing to to with reality at all, are taking this to seriously.

It's a JOKE, if you don't like it, or find offense to it, let the thread die.

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One upon a time a lion ate a whole bull. The lion, feeling full and good after his meal, roard until two hours later a hunter shot him.

Moral: Keep your mouth shut if you're full of bull.

Given your relentless beating into the ground of the "OWNED" joke, well, people who live in glass rocks shouldn't throw houses at other people. Or something like that.

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Cantina Cloud | BCF | The Massassian
Corrupting the kiddies since '97

I don't know the math to do it, but I'm pretty sure if someone thinks about it long enough, we can prove that this would destroy the earth. Sort of like the whole scientific analysis thing on TF.N that stated that the destruction of the Death Star II would kill all the Ewoks.

That's because the ancient Canadians were involved in The Bargain. So all y'all Canadians better scram. We don't need your sorcerous blood 'round here.

You do realize that any girls on Santa's list are going to be waaaaaayyyy under 18.

[This message has been edited by Dylan (edited December 02, 2003).]

they wouldn't be under 18 if I was santa...

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Truth is in the eye of the beholder.
Forum Rules

Wow, so the reindeer use the energy that they are absorbing from the air? That's pretty neat. I bet that if someone could make a car that accelerated by only using energy from air resistance, they could get pretty rich. And the cars would have no limit to their speed right? Because when they accelerated, the friction would be greater, which would give them more energy to go even faster! Boy, that would be cool.

[/sarcasm]

Man, I hate it when people violate the laws of thermodynamics. (Nothing against you, Jaiph, I know you got this from somewhere else)

Anyways, everybody knows that Santa doesn't deliver the gifts personally; he lobs them from the north pole using ballistic missiles, with the trajectories calculated so precisely that the presents enter your chimney, and bounce out of the fireplace directly in front of your Christmas Tree. Then he sends out a bunch of elves (a million or so) who bring back all the milk and cookies.

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"I'm more neutrally charged than YOU are" - BV

But that is ok, because SANTA IS A SUPER STRONG ROBOT!


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GhostOfYoda - General doer of stuff.

This is why he's dead:


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" You killed me. That wasn't very nice."
Noble Gases

Damn you Genki!!!

*shakes fist*

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I'm not an actor. I just play one on TV.