A retiring Physics professor was setting his
last exam, for a graduate course in statistical thermodynamics. Being a
bit bored with it all, and with a well kept and wry sense of humour, he set a
single question on the sheet: Is Hell endothermic or exothermic? Support your
answer with a proof. Most of the
students wrote proofs of their beliefs using Boyle's Law or some variant.
One student however wrote the following:
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First, we postulate that if souls exist, then they must have some mass. If they
do, then a mole of souls can also have a mass. So, at what rate are souls
moving into hell and at what rate are souls leaving? I think that we
can safely assume that once a soul gets to hell, it will not leave.
Therefore, no souls are leaving. As for souls entering hell, lets look at
the different religions that exist in the world today. Some of these religions
state that if you are not a member of their religion, you will go to hell. Since
there are more than one of these religions and people do not belong to more than
one religion, we can project that all people and all souls go to hell. With
birth and death rates as they are, we can expect the number of souls in hell to
increase exponentially.
.
Now, we look at the rate of change in volume in hell. Boyle's Law states that in
order for the temperature and pressure in hell to stay the same, the ratio of
the mass of souls and volume needs to stay constant. There are two possible
conditions. One, if hell is expanding at a slower rate than the rate at
which souls enter hell, then the temperature and pressure in hell will
increase exponentially until all hell breaks loose. Conversely, if hell is
expanding at a rate faster than the increase of souls in hell, then the
temperature and pressure will drop until hell freezes over.
We can resolve this question with the 1990 postulation of Theresa LeClair, the girl who lived across the hall from me in first year residence, and who told me it would be a cold day in hell before she’d sleep with me. Since I have still not been successful in obtaining sexual relations with her, condition two can be excluded, and thus it can be concluded that condition one is true, and hell is exothermic.
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