FINAL EXAM
A retiring Phys. Chem 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 humor, he set a single question on the
last sheet:
"Is Hell endothermic or exothermic. support your answer with proof."
He had little idea what to expect, or how to grade the results,
but decided to reward any student who was able to come up with a reasonable
and consistent answer to his query. One A was awarded.
Most of the students wrote proofs of their beliefs using Boyle's
Law or some variant. The top student wrote the following:
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, condition two.
We can solve this with the 1990 postulation of Theresa LeClair,
the girl who lived across the hall from me in first year residence. Since I
have
still not been successful in obtaining sexual relations with her, condition
two above has
not been met, and thus it can be concluded that condition one is true, and
hell is
exothermic.
--- Rohit Khare /// MCI Internet Architecture (BOS) /// khare@mci.net Voice+Pager: (617) 960-5131 VNet: 370-5131 Fax: (617) 960-1009