"Santa has about 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 967.7 visits per second. This is to say that for each Christian household with a good child, Santa has around 1/1000 of a second to park the sleigh, hop out, jump down the chimney, fill the stockings, distribute the remaining presents under the tree, eat whatever snacks have been left for him, get back up the chimney, jump into the sleigh and get on to the next house. Assuming that each of these 108 million stops is evenly distributed around the earth (which, of course, we know to be false, but will accept for the purposes of our calculations), we are now talking about 0.78 miles per household; a total trip of 75.5 million miles, not counting bathroom stops or breaks. This means 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, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a poky 27.4 miles per second, and a conventional 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 thousand tons, not counting Santa himself. On land, a conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. Even granting that the "flying" reindeer could pull ten times the normal amount, the job can't be done with eight or even nine of them-Santa would need 360,000 of them. This increases the payload, not counting the weight of the sleigh, 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 enormous 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 absorb 14.3 quintillion joules of energy per second each. In short, they would burst into flames almost instantaneously, exposing the reindeer behind them and creating deafening sonic booms in their wake. The entire reindeer team would be vaporised within 4.26 thousandths of a second, or right about the time Santa reached 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 seconds, would be subjected to acceleration forces of 17,500 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 reducing him to a quivering blob of pink goo.

Merry Christmas"

God I love sickipedia.

Edited by user 28 November 2011 11:11:06(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

Perhaps Santa only visits 2 houses every year or something like that. Kids are evil. Only about two or three are perhaps 'good'. Santa has high standarts.

so whats Caroline like then?

i think most people here know how that feels....
she sounds nice..

I haven't actually committed myself to do anything here or even make a post in a long time. To be honest, I'm at university studying two different and contrasting courses, a lot of my time is taken up by society meetings, and the various orchestral/choral/ambient ensembles I've immersed myself in, as well as a hectic social life between a boyfriend, university, home, and my housemates, work life for a night club and modelling, and working in general. So I've just rambled with no direct aim for a paragraph, but what I guess I'm saying is, I'm probably joining the ranks of my predecessors and probably tendering my resignation and commitment to this place.

I'd post a thread and saying I'm leaving, but I doubt anyone'll care cause I barely interacted with any of the newer members, and I'll probably still find the odd moment to lurk even so. But take care y'all, and have a banging holiday this month!

Man it's surprisingly hard to plan a good hill walk outside of Glasgow using public transport, Seems like everything is a good hour and a half away.

My body feels like a string :(

I remember my math teacher tell us this last year, which then i remembered reading this online before.

Timeless classic, too bad children nowadays are dicks.

Why not take it from your flat to your office, on your own...?

Ah, in America they would just leave it at your doorstep and hope no-one steals it for you. lol