This was an "Actual Question" given on a University of Washington chemistry midterm:
Is Hell exothermic (gives off heat) or endothermic
(absorbs heat) ?
Support your answer with proof.
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, 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 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 in Hell because Boyle's Law states that in order for temperature and the pressure in Hell to stay the same, the volume of Hell has to expand as souls are added.
This gives two possibilities:
So which is it ?
If we accept the postulate given to me by Ms. Therese Banyan during
my Freshman year, "That it will be a cold night in Hell before
I sleep with you," and take into account the fact that I still
have not succeeded in that area, then (2) cannot be true, and so
Hell is exothermic.
This student got the only A.
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