Friday, December 09, 2005
The Physics Of Christmas
LameWorldView had a pretty funny post yesterday about the physics of Santa's job on Christmas eve.
Sounded like a challenge to me!
I won't bore you with the details, but a few simplifying assumptions and a little Newton later I had a number. An astronomically large number. An incomprehensible number. Had to find a way to put it in terms people could understand. At the time, a 5-liter Mustang was about most factory horses you could get without getting truly exotic, so I started there and tried to put together a team to pull the star. Well, the number of Mustangs in harness was still incomprehensible, so I scaled them up a bit -- made them the size of the sun. Finally, I came up with a number in the realm of human experience.
It would take 60 billion Ford Mustangs, each the size our our sun, to haul a star through the sky to guide the Wise Men. Now all they need is a way to get traction....
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 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.Therefore, if Santa did exist, he's dead now. Merry Christmas!Which puts me in mind of a pastor I had some years ago. He had been a physics major in undergrad school, but seminary had pretty well knocked all of that out of him. He was preaching on the Three Wise Men and commented on how powerful God must be to drag a star through the sky to guide them. He lamented the fact that his physics skills were so corroded that he could not venture a calculation.
Sounded like a challenge to me!
I won't bore you with the details, but a few simplifying assumptions and a little Newton later I had a number. An astronomically large number. An incomprehensible number. Had to find a way to put it in terms people could understand. At the time, a 5-liter Mustang was about most factory horses you could get without getting truly exotic, so I started there and tried to put together a team to pull the star. Well, the number of Mustangs in harness was still incomprehensible, so I scaled them up a bit -- made them the size of the sun. Finally, I came up with a number in the realm of human experience.
It would take 60 billion Ford Mustangs, each the size our our sun, to haul a star through the sky to guide the Wise Men. Now all they need is a way to get traction....
