Hell might be one of the nastiest places in the universe, but it also asks a couple of questions...
"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 off when it expands and heats up when 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 that 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.He was the only student to get an A grade!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 projest that all people and all souls do 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 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 as soulds are added.
This gives two possibilities:
1) If Hell is expanding slower 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 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 by Ms Therese Banyan during my Freshman year, "that it'll be a cold night in Hell before I sleep with you", and take into the account the fact that I still have not succeeded in having sexual realtions with her, then 2 cannot be true and so Hell is exothermic.
(Kindly donated by Derek Mak from a sheet he had received from a teacher at his school (St Benedict's, London)
This question has been in much debate. In 1972, in an anonymous article in Applied Optics, an answer was attempted in which it was stated that Heaven was hotter than Hell. This outraged many bishops and priests, but there was a proof.
In Revelation 21:8, it states a lake in Hell "which burneth with fire and brimstone." For this to happen, Hell's temperature would have to be that less than the boiling point of sulphur, i.e. = 718 K (or 445 °C).
Isiah 30:26 describes Heaven where the "light of the Moon shall be as the light of the Sun and the light of the Sun shall be sevenfold,a s the light of seven days". Using Stefan's Law in which temperature in thermal equilibrium is realted to the fourth root of intensity, it works out to be 798 K (525 °C), hotter than Hell!
26 years later, they find out that the authors had misinterpreted the passed and multiplied the luminesence of the Sun to be 7x7=49 times as much instead of the single factor of 7. Plugging these numbers in, it would mean heaven was only 504.5 K (231.5 °C).
So Hell is hotter than heaven, but even then heaven is still damn hot!
Last Updated: 24 Sep 99. Edited by Lester Mak.