OT-One for the science nerds...

The following is 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 still have not succeeded in having an affair with her, then number 2 above cannot be true, and thus I am sure that Hell is endothermic and will not freeze over.

THIS STUDENT RECEIVED THE ONLY "A"

 

Found this one as well;

Engineering Proof of the non-existence of Santa (yes, we ruin
everything)

There are approximately two billion children (persons under 18) in the
world. However, since Santa does not visit children of Muslim, Hindu,
Jewish or Buddhist (except maybe in Japan) religions, this reduces the
workload for Christmas night to 15% of the total, or 378 million
(according to the Population Reference Bureau). At an average
(census) rate of 3.5 children per household, that comes to 108 million
homes, presuming that there is at least one good child in each.

Santa has about 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 illogical). This works out to 967.7
visits per second. This is to say that for each Christian household
with a good child, Santa has around 1/1000th of a second to park the
sleigh, hop out, jump down the chimney, fill the stockings, distribute
the remaining presents under the tree, eat whatever snacks have been
left for him, get back up the chimney, jump into the sleigh and get on
to the next house.

Assuming that each of these 108 million stops is evenly distributed
around the earth (which, of course, we know to be false, but will
accept for the purposes of our calculations), we are now talking about
0.78 miles per household; a total trip of 75.5 million miles, not
counting bathroom stops or breaks. This means Santa's sleigh is
moving at 650 miles per second--3,000 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, and a conventional
reindeer can run (at best) 15 miles per hour.

The payload of the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming
that each child gets nothing more than a medium sized Lego set (two
pounds), the sleigh is carrying over 500 thousand tons, not counting
Santa himself. On land, a conventional reindeer can pull no more than
300 pounds. Even granting that the "flying" reindeer could pull ten
times the normal amount, the job can't be done with eight or even nine
of them--Santa would need 360,000 of them. This increases the payload,
not counting the weight of the sleigh, another 54,000 tons, or roughly
seven times the weight of the Queen Elizabeth (the ship, not the
monarch).

600,000 tons traveling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air
resistance--this would heat up the reindeer in the same fashion as a
spacecraft re-entering the earth's atmosphere. The lead pair of
reindeer would absorb 14.3 quintillion joules of energy per second
each. In short, they would burst into flames almost instantaneously,
exposing the reindeer behind them and creating deafening sonic booms
in their wake. The entire reindeer team would be vaporized within
4.26 thousandths of a second, or right about the time Santa reached
the fifth house on his trip.

Not that it matters, however, since Santa, as a result of accelerating
from a dead stop to 650 m.p.s. in .001 seconds, would be subjected to
acceleration forces of 17,500 g's. A 250 pound Santa (which seems
ludicrously slim) would be pinned to the back of the sleigh by
4,315,015 pounds of force, instantly crushing his bones and organs and
reducing him to a quivering blob of pink goo.

Therefore, if Santa did exist, he's dead now.

Merry Christmas.

 

(written by some physics professor)

Some time ago I received a call from a colleague who asked if I would
be the referee on the grading of an examination question. He was about
to give a student a zero for his answer to a physics question, while
the student claimed he should receive a perfect score and would if the
system were not set up against the student: The instructor and the
student agreed to submit this to an impartial arbiter, and I was
selected.

I went to my colleague's office and read the examination question:
"Show how it is possible to determine the height of a tall building
with the aid of a barometer."

The student had answered: "Take a barometer to the top of the
building, attach a long rope to it, lower the barometer to the street
and then bring it up, measuring the length of the rope. The length of
the rope is the height of the building."

I pointed out that the student really had a strong case for full
credit since he had answered the question completely and correctly. On
the other hand, if full credit was given, it could well contribute to
a high grade for the student in his physics course. A high grade is
supposed to certify competence in physics, but the answer did not
confirm this. I suggested that the student have another try at
answering the question I was not surprised that my colleague agreed,
but I was surprised that the student did.

I gave the student six minutes to answer the question with the warning
that the answer should show some knowledge of physics. At the end of
five minutes, he had not written anything. I asked if he wished to
give up, but he said no. He had many answers to this problem; he was
just thinking of the best one. I excused myself for interrupting him
and asked him to please go on. In the next minute he dashed off his
answer which read:

"Take the barometer to the top of the building and lean over the edge
of the roof. Drop that barometer, timing its fall with a stopwatch.
Then using the formula S = ½at², calculate the height of the building.

At this point I asked my colleague if he would give up. He conceded,
and I gave the student almost full credit.

In leaving my colleague's office, I recalled that the student had said
he had many other answers to the problem, so I asked him what they
were. "Oh yes," said the student. "There are a great many ways of
getting the height of a tall building with a barometer. For example,
you could take the barometer out on a sunny day and measure the height
of the barometer and the length of its shadow, and the length of the
shadow of the building and by the use of a simple proportion,
determine the height of the building."

"Fine," I asked. "And the others?"

"Yes," said the student. "There is a very basic measurement method
that you will like. In this method you take the barometer and begin to
walk up the stairs. As you climb the stairs, you mark off the length
of the barometer along the wa]l. You then count the number of marks,
and this will give you the height of the building in barometer units.
A very direct method."

"Of course, if you want a more sophisticated method, you can tie the
barometer to the end of a string, swing it as a pendulum, and
determine the value of `g' at the street level and at the top of the
building. From the difference of the two values of `g' the height of
the building can be calculated."

Finally, he concluded, there are many other ways of solving the
problem. "Probably the best," he said, "is to take the barometer to
the basement and knock on the superintendent's door. When the
superintendent answers, you speak to him as follows: "Mr.
Superintendent, here I have a fine barometer. If you tell me the
height of this building, I will give you this barometer."

 

what sort of scientist are you?

 

Dave,

A fine set of points, and I'm not sure I could be arsed to spent too much time typing a mostly bollox justification for my assertions.....

A belated merry chrismas to you.

 

**** Diggin up long dead thread mode - ON ****

For all you science nerds, this is a killer website;

http://www.besse.at/sms/smsintro.html

Been sniggering at that one for some days now....

 

Not correct.

The force in question would be cetripetal force which acts at a tangent to the Earths surface and would provide no partial balancing force to your mass.

To illustrate the difference, imagine thet you are standing on the equator and facing the same direction as the rotation of the Earth (ie facing East), centrifugal force would upwards through your head. Clearly there is no force acting upwards through your head, so in this scenario there is no centrifugal force. You do however have a net forward force (angular momentum caused by you mass travelling at some 1500mph). This is centripetal force. Clearly this would be greater at the equator than at the poles, but it has little or no effect on your mass.

It could have a relativistic effect on the flow of time (as suggested by Einstein and all his relativity bollox), and time may flow infinitesimally slower at the equator than at the poles. This may affect the speed at which one could consume pies and beer, and the corresponding mass gain could be slower, and therefore make you feel lighter.