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A+ for Hell

Wingnut

Turbo Monkey
Nov 12, 2003
1,664
179
Sorry, I'm Canadian ..sorry...
Sent to me via E-mails. Funny:

Physics of Hell
The following is an actual question given on a University of Washington engineering mid term. The answer was so "profound" that the Professor shared it with his colleagues, which is why we now have the pleasure of enjoying it as well.
Bonus Question: Is Hell exothermic (gives off heat) or endothermic (absorbs heat)?
Most of the students wrote proofs of their beliefs using Boyle's Law, (gas cools off when it expands and heats up when it is compressed)** or some variant.
One student, however, wrote the following:
"First, we need to know how the mass of Hell is changing in time. So we need to know the rate that souls are moving into Hell and the rate they are 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 how many souls are 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 since people do not belong to more than one religion, we can project that 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 in Hell because Boyle's Law states that in order for the temperature and pressure in Hell to stay the same, the volume of Hell has to expand as souls are added. This gives two possibilities:
1. 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 until all Hell breaks loose.
2. Of course, 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.
So which is it? If we accept the postulate given to me by Ms. Teresa Banyan during my freshman year, "...that it will be a cold day in Hell before I sleep with you", and take into account the fact that I still have not succeeded in having sexual relations with her, then, #2 cannot be true, and thus I am sure that Hell is exothermic and will not freeze."
The student received the only "A" given in the class.
 

syadasti

i heart mac
Apr 15, 2002
12,690
290
VT
They had E-mail back then???

:redface:
RTFA and stop posting obvious chain letters newb:twitch:

The piece quoted above likely began as a humor post to the newsgroup rec.humor in 1997. Its roots, however, are far older: an unattributed parody of a scientific proof concluding Heaven was hotter than Hell appeared in a 1972 edition of Applied Optics, a story found in a 1962 book (reprinted from a 1960 magazine) is a mathematical "proof" that heaven is hotter than hell, and article published in a 1979 edition of the Journal of Irreproducible Results written by Dr. Tim Healey (written as a response to the Applied Optics piece) carried the joke one step farther by arguing that Hell was hotter still. Though these older pieces don't directly correlate with what has now become a standardized bit of Internet lore, the themes are similar enough for us to postulate that the older versions sparked the newer ones.