Cold but good

It’s been one of those good days, when all turned out much as planned, including our approximately monthly trip to the service wharf for a pump out and diesel. Sanity Again took nearly 120 litres, showing how hard the central heating’s been working for the past five weeks.

It looks like it’s going to get colder still, so we’re particularly pleased to have got it done before we start worrying about getting frozen in. We should last now until mid-February; probably we’ll need one more such session before we set off in early March for our Spring cruise.

We haven’t decided exactly what we’re doing this year; apart from anything else, we want to see what the rivers are like  after all this rain. One possibility is to head for Stourport, down the Severn to Worcester and then round the Droitwich ring before going to Crick for the show at the end of May.

After the show we’ll put in a brief call at Alrewas for dentistry, then possibly aim for Liverpool in the summer. We shall see.

/hmm

Meantime, the poor old Yanks have been having it a lot colder than us. A discussion on Canal World about photos of a frozen Niagara caused one member to remind me of a story I’d heard before:

It’s about Dr. Schambaugh, of the University of Oklahoma School of Chemical Engineering, and his Final Exam question for May of 1997. Dr. Schambaugh is known for asking questions such as, "why do airplanes fly?" on his final exams. His one and only final exam question in May 1997 for his Momentum, Heat and Mass Transfer II class was: "Is hell exothermic or endothermic? Support your answer with proof."
Most of the students wrote proofs of their beliefs using Boyle's Law or some variant. One student, however, wrote the following:
"First, we postulate that if souls exist, then they must have some mass. If they do, then a mole of souls can also have a mass. So, at what rate are souls moving into hell and at what rate are souls leaving? I think we can safely assume that once a soul gets to hell, it will not leave.
Therefore, no souls are leaving. As for souls 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, then you will go to hell. Since there are more than one of these religions and people do not belong to more than one religion, we can project that all people and 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 volume in hell. Boyle's Law states that in order for the temperature and pressure in hell to stay the same, the ratio of the mass of souls and volume needs to stay constant. Two options exist:
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 quote given to me by Theresa Manyan during 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 in having sexual relations with her, then Option 2 cannot be true...Thus, hell is exothermic."
The student, Tim Graham, got the only A grade

Edit: having published this, it occurred to me to check the credentials of the story. Sadly, snopes.com, always a useful resource for this sort of thing, shows that it's one of those internet legends. The whole tale is too long to reproduce here, but is worth looking at if you've nothing better to do just now!

Tomorrow, Elanor’s coming over to give us a hand with cleaning Sanity Again, again.