With Leah reaching a record number of 61 comments at the Wild Onion, everyone drinking way too much beer, and our Jewish friends off on holiday, I decided to post. Why? Because the holiday season is upon us and was feeling a wee bit of envy that Leah, RC, etc., might be having all the fun. I walked into Target this morning only to be bombarded with Christmas lights and trinkets. Then I went to Walmart and did a double take. Wow, I thought! That's a lot of Christmas stuff. It's September for God sakes!So...in an effort to get into the Jewish New Year, celebrate life, and see what the hell Santa's been up to, I give you this post.
Does Santa exist?As a result of an overwhelming lack of requests, and with research help from that renown Scientific Journal - I am pleased to present the annual scientific inquiry into Santa Claus.
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.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 travelling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance - this will heat the reindeer up in the same fashion as spacecraft's 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 vaporised 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.Mmmm... but remember kids, when you stop believing in Santa is when you start getting clothes for Christmas...
XO~
P.S. Found the text while Googling late last night and laughed so hard I knew I had to share it with all of you. I'll give you the website if I'm able to find it again because it's hilarious. Lot's of funny Santa jokes and stories.
8 comments:
Shana tova! All those years of living in South Florida finally paid off!
And for the record, math makes me vomit so now I gotta clean off my keyboard.
Thanks Suz!
Oh sure, next you'll be questioning the existence of the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy.
Hi Queenie!
It burns, it burns! 98 degrees here today! How can I think of Christmas?
:)
Ok Suze,
Sure the math sounds impressive and all, but the mathematical nerd forgot one important element of Santa Clause. HE'S USES MAGIC. He has a special twinkle in his eye that is able to freeze time. This allows him to visit all of the houses at his leisure. And the special finger beside the nose that allows him to magically go up and down chimneys. And the magical box he places on the roof of homes with out chimneys that mysteriously turns into a chimney. And let's not forget about the special oats with the magical glitter that he feeds his reindeer. Yes, Santa does exist. He exists in each and every heart of every young child that still believes in the Spirit of Santa Clause. He lives in the heart of each and every parent of those precious innocent children who still believe. I know Santa exists, because who else would have written a special letter to the boys telling them that he would forgive them for sampling his special cookie, but Mommy was getting coal in her stocking for letting them do it, and it best not happen again. (I'm serious, true story. It happened last year.) And the year before that he wrote them a letter to answer all of their questions and he even had Rudolph stamp his paw print on it to tell them hello! And he planted clues all over the house and yard for each boy last year as a scavenger hunt for their final toy. Yes, Santa exists, and she's, I mean he's really smart, creative, and magical. And my boys still love him/her.
OH and one more thing, Santa doesn't proof read his/her work, and he's terrible at spelling.
Santa will exist in our house for another five or six years...I'll get back to you after that.
My little cynical Jewish daughter never believed, well it doesn't apply to us anyway, but I warned her not to tell that to her Christian friends. She was absolutely aghast that I could even think she'd be that mean...
funny post, Suze!
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