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The Physics of Santa
Roland Piquepaille writes "If you don't believe that Santa Claus can deliver presents to millions of homes in a single night, Larry Silverberg, professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at North Carolina State University (NCSU), explains that Santa's society of elves has an understanding of physics and engineering that exceeds our own. In fact, Santa Claus and his crew really can deliver presents in one night because of their advanced knowledge of electromagnetic waves, the space/time continuum, nanotechnology, genetic engineering and computer science. For example, he doesn't carry presents. He uses a nano-toymaker to fabricate toys grown atom by atom inside the children's homes. Very entertaining reading... Here is a link to additional details and pictures of Santa and his elves flying over New Zealand."
Ive got a bridge and a Messiah to sell you.
Todd Neff from the Boulder Camera wrote a Christmas Eve article about the physics of Santa. He included a "Parental disretion advised" notice, but the headline writer argueably got a little carried away. Needless to say, since I live in the Republic of Boulder, outraged residents wrote several letters to the editor that were published on December 28th. So I wrote the following which ran on December 31st. Great headline by the Camera and they printed my letter in its entirety (including some subtle attempts at humor) with minor grammatical edits.
HO, HO, HO - Yes, Virginia, as my Web cam shows
As a technologist, I enjoyed Todd Neff's piece on Christmas Eve about the physics of Santa; kudos to the Daily Camera for not just reprinting the AP article, but doing some local embelishment that added a nice touch to the story (and ditto in the Dec. 28 piece about the coming leap-second).
As reported by the Camera's Kate Larsen a week earlier (Dec. 17), I have three Web cams (three more than last year) at my house watching my 26,000 Christmas lights. Needless to say, my 7-year-old and 4-year-old sons were excited to see if Santa would show up on these Web cams. And, not surprisingly, the Big Red Guy (and especially Rudolph) are quite visible stopping by our Lafayette house on Christmas Eve.
So while it would be (way!) out of place for me to weigh in on journalistic reporting as other letter writers have, I thought I would write to say that while Todd accurately reported that the physics of Santa are a challenge, the conclusion is wrong. Yes, sometimes, the paper doesn't get the story right ... and yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.
Santa does deliver presents on Christmas Eve to children around the world.
The magic/miracle is still alive, and I would suggest that Camera readers (and their kids) review the video at www.komar.org to judge for themselves.
And you'd better believe I'll be watching next year as Santa returns at Christmas.
Hulk SMASH Celiac Disease
Santa Claus: An Engineer's Perspective I. There are approximately 2 billion children (persons under 18) in the world. However, since Santa does not visit children of Muslim, Hindu, Jewish, Jehovah's Witnesses, or Buddist religions, this reduces the workload on Christmas 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 that there is at least one good child in each.
II. Santa has about 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the different time zones and 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 at least one good child, Santa has around 1/1000th of a second to park the sleigh, jump out, go 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 in the sleigh, and move on to the next house. (That's why it's really pointless to stay up and wait for him....)
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 breaks. This means that Santa's sleigh is moving at 650 miles per second, 3000 times the speed of sound. For the purposes of comparison, the fastest man-made vehicle, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a pokey 75.4 miles per second, and a conventional reindeer can run (at best) 15 miles per hour.
III. The payload of the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming that each child has 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 nothing more than 300 pounds. Even granted that "flying" reindeer could pull ten times the normal amount, the job can't be done with eight or nine of them; Santa would need 360,000 of them. This increases the payload, not counting the sleigh itself, another 54,000 tons, or roughly seven times the weight of the Queen Elizibeth (the ship, not the monarch).
IV. 600,000 tons traveling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance; this would heat up the reindeer in the same fasion 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 causing deafening sonic booms in their wake. The entire reindeer team would be vaporized within 4.2 thousandths of a second, or right about the time Santa reaches the fifth house on his trip. Not that it matters, however, since Santa, as a result of accelerating from a dead stop to 650 miles per second in .001 seconds, would be subjected to centrifugal forces of 17,500 G's. A 250 pound Santa (which seem ludicrously slim) would be pinned to the back of the sleigh by 4,315,015 pound of force, instantly crushing his bones and organs and reducing him to a quivering blob of pink goo.
V. Therefore, if Santa did exist, he's dead now.
Don't forget to click my link and read some of the responses to the original post, they're great. Merry Christmas Slashdot!
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I must say, I've never been one of the Roland haters on slashdot, but then I never knew that he wears orange glasses with a matching shirt
-Grey
Silver Clipboard: Time Management Tips
We've taken a different tack on Santa Claus than most parents. It resembles your attitude, minus the bitter hostility and swearing. :)
Our son is almost 2.5 years old, and he can already identify Santa Claus as being the fat guy with the beard in the red suit. We haven't told him what Santa Claus (purportedly) is or does; he's simply got a label for the "fat bearded guy in red suit" image now.
We'll answer any questions he asks, truthfully; at most, we're likely to tell him that Santa Claus is someone who travels around each Christmas leaving presents for children, in order to celebrate the Winter Solstice. We're going to leave out the naughty/nice thing (punishments and rewards for bad/good behavior are, it turns out, not a good idea). We're definitely going to leave Jesus out of it (we're atheists), except maybe to explain that that's what certain people believe the winter holiday is about.
My mother-in-law once said that Santa is like a "practice God" for kids to believe in, and I pretty much agree; but I'm not going to pretend he doesn't exist as an entity in our culture, and our son is going to have questions about him.
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
But there was.
No easter bunny. No unicornsIs this close enough? Even the giant unicorn is only as dead as the dodo.
mermaidsThere are mermaids, but society doesn't know how to accommodate them, so the tail is split into two legs.
dragonsCommode? Oh.
fairiesO RLY?
space aliens we know of, etc...Has there ever been an astronaut from one country lift off in another country's spacecraft? If so, that's a space alien.
As Newcleus put it, "Wiki wiki wiki wiki, shut up."
Or would you rather tell your 6 year old that we live in a cold, godless, harsh world where evil and greed runs wild...I'll stick w/ Santa for now. When they find out, they'll get over it.
No I'd rather tell a 6 year old that that people care about each other enough to give each other presents.. proving that greed doesn't have to run wild unless you let it.
OTOH you can tell him about a guy in a red suit who gives children exactly what they want on demand, and turn them into greedy consumers before they're 8.
Rudolph the Red-shift Reindeer.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
Seriously...at what point does someone think it's a good idea to lie to their children like this? Don't give me that shit about it being a good life experience for children to realize not everything is true. You can find a million other examples to show them, without perpetrating a huge falsehood on your own. It's wrong, you know it's wrong, and you will still try to justify it. Because you enjoy, in a sadistic way, the total power you exert over your children. You love playing the propaganda machine and dictator, and threatening them with retribution from a farce you concocted, and watching them squirm. Yet ten years later, you'll be so fucking ignorant as to why your children never listen to you, or trust that what you have to say might be good advice. Well...they may be right.
Have issues with our parents, do we? I haven't heard such vitriol in quite some time. Power? Sadism? Please put down the broad brush you're painting with. It's filled with venom.
It's not a lie - it's a fantasy. It's an opportunity to experience innocence before it is too quickly gone. I didn't lie to my kids - they knew early on that Santa wasn't a real person, but even after they knew, they still played along because it was fun. Fun for them, fun for us. How am I being a dictator doing that?
I hope you can let go of some of your anger before you have your own kids, friend, lest they be immune to the spirit that St. Nick is supposed to represent - giving, sharing and caring for our fellow humans.
Soko
"Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm." - Anonymous