From me ("the wishor") to you ("the wishee") Please accept without
obligation, implied or implicit, our best wishes for an environmentally
conscious, socially responsible, politically correct, low stress, non-addictive,
gender neutral, celebration of the summer solstice holiday,
practised within the most enjoyable traditions of the religious persuasion of
your choice, or secular practices of your choice, with respect for the
religious/secular persuasions and/or traditions of others, or their choice not
to practice religious or secular traditions at all.
We wish you a financially successful, personally fulfilling and medically
uncomplicated recognition of the onset of the generally accepted calendar
year 2004, but with due respect for the calendars of choice of other cultures or
sects, and having regard to the race, creed, colour, age,
physical ability, religious faith, choice of computer platform or sexual
preference of the wishee.
By accepting this greeting you are bound by these terms that:- This greeting is
subject to further clarification or withdrawal. This greeting is freely
transferable provided that no alteration shall be made to the original greeting
and that the proprietary rights of the wishor are acknowledged.
This greeting implies no promise by the wishor to actually implement any of the
wishes.
This greeting may not be enforceable in certain jurisdictions and/or the
restrictions herein may not be binding upon certain wishees in certain
jurisdictions and is revocable at the sole discretion of the wishor.
This greeting is warranted to perform as reasonably may be expected within the
usual application of good tidings, for a period of one year or until the
issuance of a subsequent holiday greeting, whichever comes first.
The wishor warrants this greeting only for the limited replacement of this wish
or issuance of a new wish at the sole discretion of the wishor. Any
references in this greeting to "the Lord", "Father Christmas", "Our Saviour",
"Rudolph the red nosed reindeer" or any other festive figures,
whether actual or fictitious, dead or alive, shall not imply any endorsement by
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any referenced third party names and images are hereby acknowledged.
This greeting is made under English Law.
As a result of an overwhelming lack of requests, and with research help from that renown scientific journal SPY magazine (January, 1990), I am pleased to present the annual scientific inquiry into Santa Claus. [*** Warning...this casts significant doubt on the legend of Santa Claus ***]
No known species of reindeer can fly. BUT there are 30,000 species of living organisms yet to be classified, and while most of these re insects and germs, this does not COMPLETELY rule out flying reindeer which only Santa has seen.
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 the 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.
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 stocking, distribute the remaining presents under the
tree, eat whatever snacks have been left, get back up the chimney, get sack
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
75.5 million miles, not counting stops to do what most of us do at least
once every 31 hours, plus feeding, etc. This means that Santa's sleigh is
moving at 650 miles per
second, about 3,000 times the speed of sound. For purposes of comparison,
the latest 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.
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 321,000 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" (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 (the cruise ship, that is).
353,000 tons travelling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance - this will heat the reindeer up in the same fashion as spacecrafts 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 back of his sleigh by 4,315,015 pounds of force.
In conclusion - If Santa ever DID deliver presents on Christmas eve, he's dead now.
[Original Author: Joseph A. Brendler, CPT, SC, Instructor, D/Physics]