Has anyone seen the one when the chemistry student was asked a bonus question on whether or not **** was endothermic or exothermic and then he proposed several standard conditions and scenarios?
Here is is from Colby College:
Fun Wth Entropy: Thermodynamics of ****
A thermodynamics professor had written a take home exam for his graduate students. It had one question: Is **** exothermic (giving off heat) or endothermic (taking in or absorbing heat)? 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 **** and at what rate are souls leaving? I think that we can safely assume that once a soul gets to ****, it will not leave. Therefore, no souls are leaving. As for souls entering ****, 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 ****. 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 ****. With birth and death rates as they are, we can expect the number of souls in **** to increase exponentially. Now, we look at the rate of change in volume in ****. Boyle's Law states that in order for the temperature and pressure in **** to stay the same, the ratio of the mass of souls and volume needs to stay constant.
A1: So, if **** is expanding at a slower rate than the rate at which souls enter ****, then the temperature and pressure in **** will increase until all **** breaks loose.
A2: Of course, if **** is expanding at a rate faster than the increase of souls in ****, then the temperature and pressure will drop until **** freezes over.
So which is it? If we accept the postulate given to me by Therese Banyan during Freshman year, that "it will be a cold night in **** before I sleep with you" and take into account the fact that I still have not succeeded in having sexual relations with her, then A2 cannot be true, and **** is exothermic.
The student got the only A.
Last edited by veggielover; 10-11-2007 at 08:10 AM.
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