Date: Fri, 24 Dec 1999 04:20:20 -0800
Reply-To: "Charles \"Luke\" Lukey" <luke@SEANET.COM>
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: "Charles \"Luke\" Lukey" <luke@SEANET.COM>
Subject: Re: my santa analysis FRIDAY
In-Reply-To: <000a01bf4dc1$46a7eb60$86fae3a9@danno>
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What you engineers failed to factor in is that Santa ain't a wuss...
Charles "Luke" Lukey
Seattle, WA
-----Original Message-----
From: Vanagon Mailing List [mailto:vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM]On Behalf
Of Dan Soiney
Sent: Thursday, December 23, 1999 7:45 PM
To: vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM
Subject: my santa analysis FRIDAY
My brother Matt came up with this....
Hello everyone and happy holidays!
I was reading Brian's post regarding Santas travels and I must say
as an enginner myself, it was quite interesting. I did find a
couple of errors which I would like to clear up. I also compiled
a couple of new thoughts.....
Paragraph IV states that Santa would be subjected to 17,000 g's.
When I read this it seemed too low so I recalculated it. To
accelerate Santa and his contents from 0 to 650 miles per
second(or 3,432,000 ft/sec)in .001 second gives an average
acceleration of 3400000000 ft/sec ^2 (the ^2 means squared).
This subjects poor old St Nick to 106000000 g's. The blob of pink
goo still applies although it happens a little faster. Assuming the 250
pound Santa, the force on his chest would be 85000000000 pounds-force.
With a chest area of 20 square feet(2880 sq inches), this gives a stress
of 290000000 psi. remember that mild steel(1018 variety) yields at
30000 psi.
paragraph IV also states that Santa would be subjected to a
centrifugal force. This is not true as he is not traveling
in a circle. Even if hey was, he would be experiencing
centripital force.....
Now I though it was important to determine the horsepower
required to accelerate Santa from 0 to 650 miles per second
in .001 second. For purposes of the calculation, I am assuming
that this happens on an infinite plane with no wind resistence.
OK--The kinetic energy required to propel Santa to the above
mentioned speed is 580000000000000000000 ft-lbs(really).
To achieve this in .001 seconds would require
1050000000000000000000 HP.If you had a lot of room and wanted
to get the above mentioned horsepower from your standard 1600
dp motor, you would need 17000000000000000000 of them.
You say "too many?" How about a few top fuel drag motors
putting out 2000 HP each. With this combo, you would still
need 8500000000 of them. Assuming that you
wanted to purchase the 1600 DP motors, you would have to spend
$5100000000000000000000 assuming a price of $300 each
(volume discount). Well how long would it take to get
them, you then ask. Well if you took every
VW engine ever made(25 million?), you would still
need an additional 680000000000 more of them.
If you could get a million a year, it wuold take 680000 years.
It looks like a little OT at the Pueble plant!
Now you are probably thinking--Lets put this power in my split!
Lets say for the purposes of this discussion, you can use one engine
to generate the necessary horsepower for the above mentioned
performance. However, since you are like me, you do not have
the cash to build a trans for it. So what kind of
rpm can you expect from your motor with a bus trans with the
following ratios: 4.12:1 R and P, .89 fourth gear, 25 in tall
tire, no reduction boxes. No reduction boxes!! at 3432000 ft/sec who
needs reduction boxes! Well I hope you get a quality engine because
at 3432000 ft/sec(assuming that all stays together)
you are spinning your motor at 68300000 rpm.
Ok now, you are cruising at 3432000 mph with no cross wind(I hope)
and you want to stop. If it takes you one second to react to a
deer in the road you have traveled 650 miles(whoa!). The amount
of energy required to stop this bus--assuming
that the bus weighs 3000 lbs (loaded westy) and you want to
stop in 500 ft is 548000000000000 ft lbs. or 740000000000000
Joules for those who remember their chemistry class.
If you wanted to heat some water with the above mentioned energy,
you could heat 1770000000000 grams of water or about 480000000 gallons
from 0 to 100 degrees celsius--assuming it's distilled.
I could go on and on......(he he he)
Merry Christmas from your nerdy enguneer'd Kaiser
Matt
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