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Date: Tue, 17 Dec 1996 23:06:00 -0500 (EST)
From: Faldafeykir
Subject: BLAGUES_L: Santa - Engineered


From: Lise Desjardins
From: Paul Rochon
From:  Bruce Angus
Sent:  December 5, 1996 1:27 PM

I thought this might amuse the engineering minds of AVeL-TECH (please
distribute):

IS SANTA CLAUS INSURED?

A group of Massachusetts Institute of Technology students have come up
with a design review on Santa's big night, following job order submittals
from the Elves' shop steward: 

- excluding non-Christians, Santa needs to visit 91.8 million homes (15
percent of the world's total), just to cover his core market. 

- this means that on Christmas Eve, the big fat fellow in red will make
822.6 household visits per second to finish his job.  Projected air speed
for this task is 650 miles per second (3000 times the speed of sound). 

- gifts for all of these households, puts the projected sleigh payload at
321,000 tons, which requires 214,200 reindeer to pull this payload.
Reindeer herd tonnage alone will inflate the payload to four times the
weight of the Queen Elizabeth 2 passenger ship. 

- hauling this load, at 650 miles per second, will cause the lead reindeer
to burst into flames almost instantly, and the whole team of reindeer will
vaporize in .00426 seconds.  Assuming Santa weighs 250 lbs, he will be
subjected to 4.31 million pounds of force, and will be crushed like a Coke
can. 

- Conclusion: If Santa ever did deliver presents on Christmas Eve, he's
toast now. 

- Moral: Engineers can sure put a damper on a fun idea.



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