A retiring Physical Chemistry 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 sheet:
"Is Hell endothermic or exothermic? Support your answer with a
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 reply 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 however 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, let's 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.
Condition 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, Condition Two, 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 during my 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.
