FunnyIndian.com: Indian Comedian / Desi Comedian Rajiv Satyal

Heated Debate

May 4th, 2009

My Uncle Vimal (whom I co-credit w/ making me funny) and Auntie Babs sent us a forwarded email that I hadn’t seen in some time. There are variations of this story, including this one, but here’s the version they sent us… I’ll even leave in the carrots (carats? karats?), mostly b/c I’m too lazy to paste it into MS Word and then hold down the Alt button to wipe ‘em all out. (Did you know you could do that to select up and down instead of side-to-side?)

Subject: Boyle’s Law

The following is supposedly an actual question given on a University

Of Washington chemistry mid-term. 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. 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 2 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.”

Funny story - and true (at least this version), surprisingly, according to Snopes.com, the definitive site for finding out whether your forwards are BS or not.

Boyle’s Law, and its counterpart, Charles’ Law, has a special place in my heart. This story isn’t so much a joke as much as one of those tales that really tells you something about me.

In chemistry class junior year of high school, we had a test in which 50% of it was going to be purely about these two laws.

Well, one is about pressure and one is about temperature but nobody could seem to remember which one was which.

So, about a minute before the teacher came in, I exclaimed, “That’s it! Boyle’s Law sounds like ‘boil.’ Boil - temperature. Therefore, the other one is pressure!”

Everyone cheered and we all sat down to take the exam. Well, about halfway thru, I noticed that all my answers were coming out wrong. Of course, I didn’t know for sure, but the numbers just weren’t making sense. I reluctantly concluded that I must’ve been wrong and changed all my answers.

I got an A. Pretty much everyone else got a 50% or below. This established me as the leader in the class for the rest of the quarter.

Boy, did people blow their tops. It took about a whole week of convincing before anyone believed that I hadn’t intentionally screwed everyone over. I was also pretty pissed back - after all, it’s not my fault that I’m insanely logical (Does that make sense?) and actually took the time to think about whether those answers were even possible… wasn’t that the whole point of science? To not just gather knowledge but think critically? Yeah, they didn’t want to hear that.

Just about everyone eventually took me at my word - after all, I was brutally honest even back then. But there were some doubters who probably persist to this day. And I love that. I’ve made it clear that I love ambiguity.

Just hope I don’t go to hell for it.

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