During the holiday season we see images of lots of stuff not found in nature: flying reindeer, sugarplum fairies, and geometrically incorrect snowflakes. Now, Thomas Koop, a chemist, is trying to fix the snowflake problem.
Koop thinks ice crystals are masterpieces of natural beauty. Unfortunately, he says, "This beauty is sometimes corrupted."
The quest for accuracy in advertising. An exercise in futility if ever there were one!
Santa has 31 hours to visit 378 million Christian children; at the rate of 3.5 children per household, and assuming at least one good child per home, this comes to 108 million homes; if each child receives no more than a medium sized Lego set (two pounds), the sleigh would be carrying more than 500 thousand tons, not counting Santa himself; Santa would thus need at least 360,000 Reindeer to pull the sleigh; since Santa must visit 108 homes in 31 hours, he will have to travel at 650 miles per second -- 3,000 times the speed of sound; at that speed, the lead pair of Reindeer would absorb 14.3 quintillion joules of energy per second each and vaporize – indeed, the entire Reindeer team would be vaporized within 4.26 thousandths of a second; Santa himself would be subjected to 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, and be crushed.This just shows that there's a miracle for Santa to exist!
