>
> How Hot Is It In Hell?  (A True Story from a Yale professor)
>
>    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 off 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 most 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.
>
>    Second, 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 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 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 Miss
> Theresa Banyan during my freshman year that, "It will be a cold night in
>
> Hell before I sleep with you," and take into account the fact that I
> still
> have not succeeded with her, then #2 cannot be true, and so Hell is
> exothermic.
>
>    The student got the only A.
>
>