bimshwel wrote:ALTHOUGH i suppose smoke would go up rather than float along above the surface. But I also know hardly anything about physics!
Well it's a simple question of buyancy. Is smoke lighter than air?
Usually yes because it's way hotter than the surrounding air. Gas molecules take up more space when they're hot because they moleculespread their arms and legs around to cool down. Whereas when it's cold they curl up into fetal position to save warmth. So the same volume of smoke ends up containing less mass than the same volume of air because air is cold and smoke is hot, and that makes smoke lighter, and therefore buoyant, and it rises. It's basically the same process that happens in public transportation when someone who spreads to occupy two seats instead of just one gets thrown out through the window by the densely-packed crowd.
Now that we're done with the rigorously accurate description of the relevant physics, we can examine what happens to smoke in Hell. It is generally accepted that Hell is kind of a hot place. Like, the kind of place where a snowball doesn't have any chance. We can assume that the ambiant air would, therefore, be also very hot. What happens to smoke? Now it's barely any hotter than the surrounding air! At this point it becomes relevant to look at smoke's baggage. While air molecules are wandering around completely nekkid (that's why they're transparent), those smoke molecules have their travel bags filled with soot and ash! So they're kinda heavy. So the weight-per-volume of slightly-hotter-but-also-heavier smoke may end up being about the same as the weight-per-volume of slightly-colder-but-also-lighter air. And that reduces the buoyancy of the smoke.
And this has been an incredibly scientific examination at why smoke doesn't go up in Hell.
