[Looks like this engineer had nothing better to do with his time, so he came
up with a mathematical proof for the non-existence of 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 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 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 spacecrafts 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 vaporized 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.
In conclusion - If Santa ever DID deliver presents on Christmas Eve, he’s dead now.
Santa's Guh-nomes - Archie Bunker
Engineering with fabric. - Jean Muir
Politics is an inexact science. - Otto von Bismarck
Astrology is a disease, not a science. - Maimonides
Mistakes are proof that you are trying. - Unknown
A turkey never voted for an early Christmas. - Unknown
Logic is neither science nor an art, but a dodge. - Benjamin Jowett
Death and taxes are unsolved engineering problems. - Romana Machado
All science is either physics or stamp collecting. - Ernest Rutherford
Marketing isn't magic. There is a science to it. - Dan Zarrella
I get really grinchy right up until Christmas morning. - Dan Aykroyd
Men love to wonder, and that is the seed of our science. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
A science which hesitates to forget its founders is lost. - Alfred North Whitehead
I'm walking backwards for Christmas Across the Irish Sea. - Spike Milligan
Santa Claus has the right idea. Visit people only once a year. - Victor Borge
Science is what you know, philosophy is what you don't know. - Bertrand Russell
Wine is constant proof that God loves us and loves to see us happy. - Benjamin Franklin
Proof is an idol before whom the pure mathematician tortures himself. - Sir Arthur Eddington
Science is a differential equation. Religion is a boundary condition. - Alan Turing
Science becomes dangerous only when it imagines that it has reached its goal. - George Bernard Shaw
There is no such thing as science fiction, there is only science eventuality. - Steven Spielberg
No science is immune to the infection of politics and the corruption of power. - Jacob Bronowski
The turkey is living proof that an animal can survive with no intelligence at all. - Harvey D. Comstock
The main reason Santa is so jolly is because he knows where all the bad girls live. - George Carlin
Science is the ascertainment of facts and the refusal to regard facts as permanent. - Unknown
I built my church on Easter services, Christmas Eve services, and Norman Vincent Peale. - Robert H. Schuller
Mathematics is the cheapest science. All one needs for mathematics is a pencil and a paper. - George Polya
The next time you hear a social media myth, question it. Ask for the proof, and ask out loud. - Dan Zarrella
The Christmas season has come to mean the period when the public plays Santa Claus to the merchants. - John Andrew Holmes
The best of all gifts around any Christmas tree: the presence of a family all wrapped up in each other. - Bill Vaughan
Mathematics is the only science where one never knows what one is talking about nor whether what is said is true. - Bertrand Russell
It is mathematical fact that the casting of this pebble from my hand alters the center of gravity of the universe. - Thomas Carlyle
A lovely thing about Christmas is that it's compulsory, like a thunderstorm, and we all go through it together. - Garrison Keillor
Science has not yet mastered prophecy. We predict too much for the next year and yet far too little for the next ten. - Neil A Armstrong
I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again. - Oscar Wilde
Did you read about Starbucks? No more "Merry Christmas" at Starbucks. No more. Maybe we should boycott Starbucks. - Donald Trump
The fundamental concept in social science is Power, in the same sense in which Energy is the fundamental concept in physics. - Bertrand Russell
Dontopedalogy is the science of opening your mouth and putting your foot in it, a science which I have practiced for a good many years. - Prince Philip
When a train goes through a tunnel and it gets dark, you don't throw away the ticket and jump off. You sit still and trust the engineer. - Corrie Ten Boom
Whenever you are embarrassed, just remember that in 1999 NASA destroyed a $655 Million project because the engineers mistook kilograms and pounds. - Unknown
Modern Santa Claus
Hold On, Let Me Catch The Ball
Big Hands Baby
Fire Truck Sinkhole
I Sea Drums
Statue of Libertea
Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner Burrito
Commas Save Lives
Never Give Up
Girl Sitting or Boy Hugging?
The Domino's Effect
Wedding Pound Cake
Fear Of Light