A little wiseacre reflects on the nature of Hades

Bart shared this, which I gather is one of those things going around on the Internet:

HELL EXPLAINED
BY A CHEMISTRY STUDENT
The following is an actual question given on a University of Arizona chemistry midterm, and an actual answer turned in by a student.
The answer by one student was so ‘profound’ that the professor shared it with colleagues, via the Internet, which is, of course, 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 when it expands and heats 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 at which souls are moving into Hell and the rate at which they are leaving, which is unlikely… 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.
Most of these religions state that if you are not a member of their religion, you will go to Hell. Since there is 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 proportionately 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. 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 Teresa 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 slept with her last night, then number two must be true, and thus I am sure that Hell is exothermic and has already frozen over. The corollary of this theory is that since Hell has frozen
over, it follows that it is not accepting any more souls and is therefore, extinct….. …leaving only Heaven, thereby proving the existence of a divine being which explains why, last night, Teresa kept shouting ‘Oh my God.’
THIS STUDENT RECEIVED AN A+.

I confess that it made me smile, in spite of the blasphemy. But then I feel bad for smiling a humor that derives its force from mocking, however gently, all religion. If you think about it, this is just the sort of thing that one of Satan’s lesser devils may have written, were he a chemistry student. If he were feeling particularly cocky after having gotten lucky with Teresa.

Oh, and the answer was not “profound.” Being a little wiseacre is not profound.

8 thoughts on “A little wiseacre reflects on the nature of Hades

  1. Brad

    I hope so. I hope Teresa found this paper, and slapped him good and hard before telling him to go to a place that is constantly hot, and neither expanding nor contracting.

  2. Karen McLeod

    If most of us weren’t to completely convinced that everyone else was going to Hell, this proof would be easily refuted.

  3. `Kathryn Fenner

    Brad, but that “God” humor goes over so well at Health and Happiness, especially if there’s s-e-x somewhere. Maybe you should try it.

    Personally, it makes me squirmy.

  4. Bart

    Sorry I’m late in responding. My purpose was not to encourage blasphemy but to point out that anyone can at anytime and under almost any conditions find a way to reason out with some logic any position one may take on any subject. I am sure that on the other hand, someone with a different point of view could use a similar twisted path to reach a logical sounding conclusion.

    But, there is always a Paul Harvey moment in these little antidotes. Teresa probably was very drunk and initially was not aware of the who or where in her inebriated state and when she realized the who, she realized the horror of the situation thus causing the sudden and repeated shouts of OMG!!

    Brad, I am sure she probably went to confession the next morning and said at least 1,000 Hail Marys and voluntarily served a minimum of 6 months penitence.

    And, that is the rest of the story.

Comments are closed.