JamesNahikian 0 #1 December 13, 2002 LONDON (Reuters) - A British vicar reduced young children to tears and stunned their parents when he said Santa Claus and his reindeer would burn to a crisp while delivering presents at supersonic speed. Stand-in vicar Lee Rayfield shattered the illusions of dozens of kids when he joked in his carol service sermon that Santa and his reindeer would burn up doing 3,000 times the speed of sound as they delivered gifts to 91.8 million homes. Newspapers said many children at the school service at St Mary's Church in Maidenhead, west of London, were distraught when Rayfield pointed out that it was logically impossible for one man and his sleigh to deliver 378 million presents in just 31 hours. D. James Nahikian CHICAGO Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
DZBone 0 #2 December 13, 2002 Thank you, Mr. Spock. That will be enough. _________________________________________________ If you hadn't read this, would it have made a sound? Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
ernokaikkonen 0 #3 December 13, 2002 Please don't shoot the doggie..The "Santa would burn to a crisp"-thingie has been doing rounds on the 'Net for years... I wonder if someone finally put it to good use or if it's just BS? Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
nacmacfeegle 0 #4 December 13, 2002 "Stand-in vicar Lee Rayfield shattered the illusions of dozens of kids when he joked in his carol service sermon that Santa and his reindeer would burn up doing 3,000 times the speed of sound as they delivered gifts to 91.8 million homes" An unbeliever, this man has no faith, he is a heretic. Burn him, burn him....I'm sending the tooth fairy round, and she's bringing her own pliers....What dya mean no Santa...Pah, this is the one time of year being fat and jolly actually pays off... -------------------- He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. Thomas Jefferson Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
darkwing 4 #5 December 13, 2002 Does anyone else see the irony in a Priest telling some kids that their beliefs are really fantasy? -- Jeff My Skydiving History Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
nacmacfeegle 0 #6 December 13, 2002 Yes, see above.... -------------------- He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. Thomas Jefferson Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
dreamsville 0 #7 December 13, 2002 Very funny. I know this is irrelevant, and should probably be a PM (not "prime minister"), but you never called me back. Flaky. HarryI don't drink during the day, so I don't know what it is about this airline. I keep falling out the door of the plane. Harry, FB #4143 Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
kallend 1,623 #8 December 13, 2002 QuoteLONDON (Reuters) - A British vicar reduced young children to tears and stunned their parents when he said Santa Claus and his reindeer would burn to a crisp while delivering presents at supersonic speed. Stand-in vicar Lee Rayfield shattered the illusions of dozens of kids when he joked in his carol service sermon that Santa and his reindeer would burn up doing 3,000 times the speed of sound as they delivered gifts to 91.8 million homes. Newspapers said many children at the school service at St Mary's Church in Maidenhead, west of London, were distraught when Rayfield pointed out that it was logically impossible for one man and his sleigh to deliver 378 million presents in just 31 hours. D. James Nahikian CHICAGO Unfortunately, all of these "scientific" explanations (like another recent one on the gender of Santa's reindeer) fail to take account of one simple thing - MAGIC. If you're magic, then the rules of physics simply don't apply.... The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
wildblue 4 #9 December 13, 2002 haha! good timing! I got this in my inbox today: --- A Christmas Story from an engineer's point of view... 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 (except maybe in Japan), this reduces the workload for Christmas night to 15% of the total, or 378 million kids (according to the population reference bureau). At an average rate of 3.5 children per household, that comes to 108 million homes, presuming there is at least one good child in each. Santa has about 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the different time zones and the rotation of the earth, assuming he works east to west (which seems logical). This comes 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 stocking, 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 onto 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 can pull 10 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). A mass of nearly 600,000 tons traveling 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 adsorb 14.3 quintillion joules of energy per second each. In short, they would burst into flames almost instantaneously, subsequently exposing each pair of reindeer behind them to the same fate while 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 to 650 mps in .001 seconds, would be subjected to acceleration forces of 17,000 G's. A 250 pound Santa (which seems ludicrously slim considering all the high calorie snacks he must have consumed over the years) 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. Therefore, if Santa did exist, he's dead now. Merry Christmas!it's like incest - you're substituting convenience for quality Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Cajun 0 #10 December 13, 2002 you are welcome Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
happythoughts 0 #11 December 13, 2002 "If you're magic, then the rules of physics simply don't apply. " Boy...don't I wish I was taking one of your physics essay tests right now. Well... according to Prof Kallend: If you're magic, then the rules of physics simply don't apply. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
jumperconway 0 #12 December 16, 2002 None of this applies when time stands still Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
