Hotter Than Hades…
A thermodynamics professor had written a take-home exam for his graduate students. It had only one question:
“Is Hell exothermic (Gives off heat) or endothermic (Absorbs heat)? Support your answer with a proof.”
Most of the students wrote proofs of their beliefs using Boyle’s Law (Gas cools when it expands and heats up when compressed) or some variant.
One student however, wrote the following:
“First, we need to know how the mass of Hell is changing over time. So, we need to know the rate at which souls are moving into Hell and the rate at which they leave. I think we can safely assume that once a soul enters Hell, it will not leave. Therefore, no souls are leaving.
As for how many souls are entering Hell, let us look at the different religions that exist in the world today. Most religions state that if you are not part of their religion, you will go to Hell. Since there are more than one of these religions and since 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 of the volume of Hell. Boyle’s Law states that in order for the temperature and pressure of Hell to remain the same, the volume of Hell has to increase as souls are added.
This gives us two possibilities:
#1 - If Hell is expanding at a slower rate than the rate at which souls enter, then the temperature of Hell will increase until all Hell breaks loose.
#2 – Of course, if Hell is expanding at a rate faster than the rate of increase of souls in Hell, then the temperature and pressure will drop until Hell freezes over.
So which is it?
If we accept the postulate given to me by Ms. Laura Turner during my freshman year, that “it will be a cold night in Hell before I sleep with you”, and take into account that I still have not succeeded in having sexual relations with her, then #2 cannot be true, and so Hell is exothermic.”
He got the only A.
