An oldie but a goodie

A true story. A thermodynamics professor had written a take home exam for
his graduate students. It had one question:

Is hell exothermic or endothermic?
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:

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.

So, 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.

Of course, if hell is expanding at a rate faster
than the increase of souls in hell, than the
temperature and pressure will drop until hell
freezes over.

So which is it? If we accept the postulate given
me by Therese Banyan during Freshman year
concerning cold days in hell, and take into
account the fact that I still have not succeeded
in having sexual relations with her, then
the second cannot be true, and hell is thus
proved to be exothermic."

 

hahaha, i like that one.

 

I love reading that joke, it's bloody brilliant.

 

i've seen that before. that essay was the only A.

 

reminds me of that other story about an essay where the philosophy professor makes an essay prompt that asks merely "why?" and the guy who replied "why not?" got the best grade.

 

A group of students were out partying for the weekend. They lost track of time and missed an important test on monday at college. When they finally went back on tuesday, one of the guys went up to the proffessor and told him that they got a flat tyre on the way back and that's why they were late. The proffessor then let them take the test in separate rooms. The test was as following:

Question 1 (5%): What is your name?

Then they turned the page.

Question 2 (95%): Which tyre?


Please excuse my lame humour,
-TX297