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WORLD-GENERATION NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2016

19

AROUNDTHE WORLD WITH SANTA CLAUS

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 (maybe in Japan) 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 household, which comes to

108 million homes, presuming there is at

least 1 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 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 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 on 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, or 3,000

times the speed of sound.

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 travelling at

650 miles per second creates enormous air

resistance.

This would heat up the reindeer in the

same fashion as a spacecraft reentering 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 to 650 miles/second 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.

So is there really a Santa Claus?

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

PERSPECTIVE

ENGINEERSTAKETHE FUN OUT OF CHRISTMAS

BY R.PALMER

NEXT ISSUE

Class of 2017

February/March 2017

Closing February 28, 2017

BACK ON CAMPUS

WITH SHARON ALLEN,CLASS OF 2007

ONTHE EDGE: WHAT SGIP IS DOINGTO

SUPPORT DER PROLIFERATION

Do you remember the late 1990s, when

Apple was very much an underdog fighting

for its share of the computer-market bone?

IBM’s slogan was “Think,” so Apple ran with

“Think Different.”

Today, twenty years later, the company

that never did manage to elbow windows

computers off the shelf still prevailed by

following its own slogan. Consider this:

Some 40 percent of U.S. smartphone users

are walking around with an iPhone in their

pockets.

I recall this marketing success because

I want utilities to take a cue from Apple:

Think different. If you’re not already doing

so, now would be a good time to start.

Many utility professionals have already

begun to think differently, and I have the

honor of working with some of them in the

Grid Management Working Group hosted

by SGIP. What are they thinking about?

Take a look.

GRID-EDGE MONITORING AND

CONTROL TECHNOLOGY

We must move monitoring and control

technology farther out toward the grid edge.

My discussions with utility professionals tell

me we’re already behind on this evolution.

As examples showing why this is so

important, consider these experiences from

a West Coast utility.

In one case, the utility had grid-scale

solar generating at full output as well as a

400 MW pump storage station that was

pushing water behind the dam. When the

pump station tripped off, voltage jumped and

capacitor banks tripped off. While this didn’t

result in outages, it could have. If a bunch of

capacitor banks go down and voltage goes

too low, lines will trip off due to instability.

In another case, outages did occur. The

utility had an under-frequency scheme in

place, and it had to respond within six cycles

to be effective. All looked well when low

voltage kicked this protective scheme into

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