WIX Archives

Slow day at work Steve? :0)

Posted by Tony on Tue Dec 18, 2001 08:03:26 AM

In reply top Something light hearted... posted by Steve Young on Tue Dec 18, 2001 07:56:07 AM


Santa Claus, like all pilots, gets regular visits from the
Federal Aviation Administration, and it was shortly before
Christmas when the FAA examiner arrived.

In preparation, Santa had the elves wash the sled and bathe
all the reindeer. Santa got his logbook out and made sure all
his paperwork was in order.


The examiner walked slowly around the sled. He checked the
reindeer harnesses, the landing gear, and Rudolf's nose. He
painstakingly reviewed Santa's weight and balance
calculations for the sled's enormous payload.


Finally, they were ready for the checkride. Santa got in,
fastened his seatbelt and shoulder harness, and checked the
compass. Then the examiner hopped in carrying, to Santa's
surprise, a shotgun.


"What's that for?" asked Santa incredulously.


The examiner winked and said, "I'm not supposed to tell you
this, but you're gonna lose an engine on takeoff." :0)

and what do you mean Santa doesn't exist?

Who the hell is gonna bring me my Spit XIX one of these Christmas's?

Tony (age 9)

Properly depressed and disillusioned now





: One for the engineers out there....
:
: -------------------------------------------
:
: An Engineer's Concept of Santa Claus
:
: There are approximately two billion children (persons unde
: r 18) in the world. However, since Santa does not visit ch
: ildren of Muslim, Hindu, Jewish or Buddhist (except maybe
: in Japan) religions, this reduces the workload for Christm
: as 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 le
: ast one good child in each. Santa has about 31 hours of Ch
: ristmas to work with, thanks to the different time zones a
: nd the rotation of the earth, assuming east to west (which
: seems logical). This works out to 967.7 visits per secon
: d.
:
: This is to say that for each Christian household with a go
: od child, Santa has around 1/1000 th of a second to park t
: he sleigh, hop out, jump down the chimney, fill the stocki
: ng, distribute the remaining presents under the tree, eat
: whatever snacks have been left for him, get back up the ch
: imney, jump into the sleigh and get onto the next house.
:
: Assuming that each of these 108 million stops is evenly di
: stributed around the earth (which, of course, we know to b
: e false, but will accept for the purposes of our calculati
: ons), we are now talking about 0.78 miles per household; a
: total trip of 75.5 million miles, not counting bathroom s
: tops or breaks.
:
: This means Santa's sleigh is moving at 650 miles per secon
: d--3,000 times the speed of sound. For purposes of compar
: ison, the fastest man made vehicle, the Ulysses space prob
: e moves at a poky 27.4 miles per second, and a conventiona
: l reindeer can run (at best) 15 miles per hour.
:
: 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 thousands tons, not counting Santa himself. On land, a
: conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. E
: ven granting that the "flying" reindeer can pull 10 times
: the normal amount, the job can't be done with eight or eve
: n nine of them---Santa would need 360,000 of them. This i
: ncreases the payload, not counting the weight of the sleig
: h, 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 en
: ormous 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 adsorb 14.3 q
: uintillion joules of energy per second each. In short, the
: y would burst into flames almost instantaneously, exposing
: the reindeer behind them and creating deafening sonic boo
: ms in their wake.
:
: The entire reindeer team would be vaporised within 4.26 th
: ousandths of a second, or right about the time Santa reach
: ed the fifth house on his trip.
:
: Not that it matters, however, since Santa, as a result of
: accelerating from a dead stop to 650 m.p.s. in .001 second
: s, 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 reduci
: ng him to a quivering blob of pink goo.
:
: Therefore, if Santa did exist, he's dead now.
:
: Merry Christmas. ;)

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