Festive Season

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mikeg
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Festive Season

Post by mikeg »

I would like to wish all of the Forum organisers and contributers a very happy Christmas & New Year. It is an excellent forum second to none. Thanks very much all and happy motoring.
Mike Goodland.
Jon

Post by Jon »

Thanks everyone, and Merry Christmas to all.
Mike, I've got some money for you, give me a bell after Xmas!
Robin
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Post by Robin »

May I join Mike in his good wishes and offer all of you the most prosperous New Year.
It is indeed a wonderful forum. Merry Christmas. I do however have a dilemma -
SANTA CLAUS: An Engineer's Perspective
I. There are approximately two billion children (persons under 18) in the world. However, since Santa does not visit children of Muslim, Hindu, Jewish or Buddhist religions, this reduces the workload for 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 house hold, 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 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 1/1000th 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.
III. 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).
IV. 600,000 tons travelling at 650 miles per second crates 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 vaporized 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 650 m.p.s. in .001 seconds, would be subjected to centrifugal 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.
V. Therefore, if Santa did exist, he's dead now.
pwatson
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Post by pwatson »

"if Santa did exist, he's dead now"
Well, that's destroyed my illusions and ruined Christmas for me! I'll just have to wish you all a happier Christmas than I'm now going to have!
Best wishes to you all! And safe driving!
mikeg
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Post by mikeg »

Santa might be dead now but his memory lingers on and on and on--------on--------------------on
Thanks Jon.
and on
beezer
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Post by beezer »

Robin -that's the contributor Robin not the bird which has become symbolic of Christmas - you are out of date. Father Christmas has put his reindeer out to graze and got himself a Citroen. He is now known as Xantia Claus.
Merry one. God Jul etc.
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np
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Post by np »

Or without the "i",Xanta Claus.
Happy Christmas to all.
oilyspanner
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Post by oilyspanner »

Merry Christmas to all readers and contributors to this lively and useful forum, and perhaps a reliable and prosperous new year.
Stewart
dan.2cv
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Post by dan.2cv »

I hope everyone has a great Christmas and happy new year. I have had loads of great advice from the forum this year, sometimes been able to offer my own humble opinion and often been able to offer the odd daft quip and tongue in cheek reply when I should have been doing something far more productive like the washing up.
Thanks Andyspares forum, I will never have to play solitaire again.
Forth
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Post by Forth »

Happy Christmas and best wishes for the New Year to forum admin and posters .... and thank you all very, very much indeed for such invaluable advice and info throughout the past year.
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AndersDK
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Post by AndersDK »

<font size="6"><font color="red">God jul</font id="red"></font id="size6">
<font color="red"><font size="5">- merry christmas -</font id="size5"></font id="red">
[:)] To all of you [:)]
Dave Bamber
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Post by Dave Bamber »

Best wishes to all[:D][:D]
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang on the telly, can of Stella in the hand[:o)], two <i>very</i> excited children in the house, ain't Christmas great!
p20
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Post by p20 »

Merry Christmas to all.[:)][:)]
martyhopkirk

Post by martyhopkirk »

Thats why I have gone online.... Raining, Chity Chity Bang Bang and due to medical problems no alcohol - oh and 2 excited children to scrape off the ceiling!
harryb.48
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Post by harryb.48 »

This is indeed a wonderful forum - without your collective wisdom and
undying optimism I would have carried on thinking my Xantia was a heap of scrap and not the comfortable ,reliable car it really is![;)][:D]
Christmas wishes/Joyeux Noel to all[:)]
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