Things wot made me Laugh

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How Hot Is It In Hell?

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

"Is Hell exothermic (gives off heat) or endothermic (absorbs heat?) Support your answer with a proof.

Most of the students wrote proofs of their beliefs using Boyle's Law (gas cools 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 in the volume of 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 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. Of course, if Hell is expanding at a rate faster than the increase in the number of souls in Hell, then the temperature and pressure will drop until Hell freezes over.

So, which is is? If we accept the postulate given to me by Ms. Therese Banyan 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 have not succeeded in having sexual relations with her, then #2 cannot be true, and so Hell is exothermic.

This student got the only A.

Is there a Santa Claus?


As a result of an overwhelming lack of requests, and with research help from that renowned scientific journal, SPY Magazine, (January,1990), I am pleased to present the annual scientific inquiry into Santa Claus.

  1. No known species of reindeer can fly, BUT there are 300,000 species of living organisms yet to be classified, and while most of these are insects and germs this does not COMPLETELY rule out flying reindeer (which only Santa has ever seen.)

  2. There are 2 billion children (persons under 18) in the world, BUT since Santa doesn't (apparently) handle the Muslim, Hindu, Jewish and Buddhist children, that reduces his workload to approx 15% of the total - 378 million according to the Population Reference Bureau. At an average (census) rate of 3.5 children per household, that's 91.8 Million homes. One presumes there is at least one good child in each.

  3. Santa has 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the different time zones and the rotation of the Earth, assuming he travels east to west (which seems logical). This works out at 822.6 visits per second. That is to say, that for each Christian household with good children, Santa has 0.001 seconds to park, hop out of his sleigh, jump down the chimney, fill the stockings, distribute the remaining presents under the tree, eat whatever snacks have been left, get back up the chimney, get into the sleigh and move on to the next house. Assuming that each of these 91.8 Million stops are evenly distributed around the Earth, (a fact which we know not to be true, but for the purposes of our calculations we will accept) we are now talking about 0.78 miles per household, a total trip of 75.5 Million miles, not counting stops to do what most of us must do at least once every 31 hours (remember all the snacks & liquid refreshments!), plus feeding the flying reindeer.
    This means that Santa's sleigh is moving at 650 miles per second, 3000 times the speed of sound. For purposes of comparison, the fastest man-made vehicle, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a poky 27.4 miles per second; a conventional earth-bound reindeer can run 15 mph, tops.

  4. The payload of the sleigh adds another interesting element to the equation : assuming that each child gets nothing more than a medium sized Lego set (2 pounds), the sleigh is carrying 321,300 tons, not counting Santa, who is invariably described as overweight. On land, conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. Even granting "flying reindeer" the ability to pull 10 times the normal amount, we cannot do the job with eight or even nine. We need 214,200 reindeer. This in turn increases the payload, not counting the weight of the sleigh, to 353,430 tons. Again for comparison, this is four times the weight of the Queen Elizabeth, a 'rather large' ocean liner.

  5. 353,000 tons travelling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance. This will heat up the reindeer in the same fashion as a spacecraft re-entering the Earth's atmosphere. The lead pair of reindeer will absorb 14.3 QUINTILLION Joules of energy. Per second. Each. In short they will burst into flame almost instantaneously, exposing the reindeer behind them and creating deafening sonic booms in their wake.
    The entire reindeer team will be vaporised within 0.00426 seconds. Santa, meanwhile, will be exposed to centrifugal forces 17,500.06 times greater than gravity. A 250 lb. Santa (which seems ludicrously thin by all descriptions) would be pinned to the back of his sleigh by 4,315,015 pounds of force.
In conclusion - if Santa ever did deliver presents on Christmas Eve, he's dead now.

Castle Gormenghast has to be the funniest single site I have seen in ages... ROFL will never seem the same again!
The ED! Page Weird Page. Just weird. Try it.
Private Eye The UK's top satire magazine IMHO.
Monty Python Sounds A Collection of WAVs from their TV programs and films.
PootPoot.comThis is truly the way to view the Web... just type in your favourite URL...
Progress Computer-related Humour Links
Funny.co.uk Good UK site, but quite busy... be warned!
Goon Show Scripts I nearly wet myself! Nuff said.
Church of the Quivering OtterGet spiritual, learn the truth about the universe (and otters), join the brotherhood, Laugh your socks off.
Useless PagesWot it sez.

Any other sites you think should be added? Contact me!



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