Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2015 August 23

= August 23 =

What happens when graveyards get full?
This has been puzzling me for years. People die all the time, and dead people don't just rise from their graves. So don't graveyards get fuller and fuller? What happens when they reach their capacity? Are old graves destroyed to make room for new ones, or are the new bodies simply discarded instead of buried, or do people build new graveyards? J I P &#124; Talk 18:36, 23 August 2015 (UTC)


 * The old bodies are exhumed and the bones collected together in ossuaries or charnel houses. The ground then gets reused. --TammyMoet (talk) 19:45, 23 August 2015 (UTC)


 * It's a problem that has raised its head more and more in the last 15 years with a lot of countries exploring whether 'grave recycling' or re-use would be a viable (and humane) option. In some countries, the grave is only leased for a period of 25 years (although graves older than 100 years old are almost considered to be public monuments) and that lease can be annulled with the agreement of both parties. For some discussion and further info see      . Historically in London, graveyards attached to large churches were emptied when full (exhumation) and the contents placed in the ossuary or burned before this became untenable in the mid to late 1800s with the closure of most of the city's cemetaries due to bodies polluting local water (see London_Necropolis_Railway. The London Necropolis Company created the Necropolis Railway which moved the bodies to a large cemetary outside of the city boundary. This ended during WWII as the main stations were destroyed by bombing. Nanonic (talk) 19:57, 23 August 2015 (UTC)


 * Fort Canning was built on what used to be Forbidden Hill Cemetery. 120 years later, death died again at Fort Canning Cemetery. In 1984, John Miksic (sponsored by the granddaddy of reusing very old remains, Royal Dutch Shell) decided to dig deeper and stir far older and crankier spirits from their slumber (or maybe just find pottery). Now at the less-foreboding sounding Fort Canning Green, there are gravestones from yet another dead cemetery, Bukit Timah.
 * Today, they're resurrecting the classic underdog, Rocky. "Gates open" at five. InedibleHulk (talk) 21:06, 23 August 2015 (UTC)


 * Speaking of classic underdogs, the dog from Marley and Me later made a brief comeback. Not in a Pet Sematary way; pet exhumation is apparently a thriving business and Google treats "cremation" as a synonym for "exhumation". All dogs go to the furnace, it seems. InedibleHulk (talk) 21:25, 23 August 2015 (UTC)


 * Where I live, they just buy an extra piece of land to extend the graveyard, but this often isn't possible in towns and cities, of course. New cemeteries are sometimes built such as this one in Birmingham but this is becoming less common in the UK as cremations become more popular.    D b f i r s   08:48, 24 August 2015 (UTC)


 * I'm a member of a family of bricklayers and stonemasons in south Louisiana which maintains a family crypt in Terrebonne Parish on land which has a very high water table. The crypt has nine coffin-sized rectangular spaces, but the family began removing the coffins and placing several sets of bones in each space some time ago, which is a moderate temporizing measure (we could accommodate as many as thirty or forty sets of remains that way).


 * My own immediate family (myself, my wife and our sons) have agreed to simply seek cremation and place our cremains creatively; when my younger son was one of several Louisiana Army National Guard troops who perished in an IED attack in Iraq, and at the present we and our daughter-in-law agreed his cremains would occupy a space of honor in the Louisiana Army National Guard armory in Houma, Louisiana. This solves both the issue of diminishing space for interments in the area with the establishment of an historically valuable memorial of our son's service to his nation and that of his slain comrades. loupgarous 01:09, 27 August 2015 (UTC)

Diesel
Why do pretty much all large vehicles (minivans, vans, trucks, trains, and even ships) run on diesel instead of gasoline? Bear in mind that I know only the basics of how a combustion engine works, and don't know the difference between diesel and gasoline. Is there some sort of advantage for gasoline for small vehicles and for diesel for large ones? J I P &#124; Talk 20:23, 23 August 2015 (UTC)
 * The diesel engine provides greater torque than a comparable gasoline engine. Comparable exactly how, I'm not quite sure, but the linked diesel engine article has a "torque" section that might get you started. --Trovatore (talk) 20:46, 23 August 2015 (UTC)
 * A higher MPG is always stated as a benefit for diesel fuelled vehicles (see also Diesel_fuel and Diesel_engine), the trade off is in price. A diesel engine is more expensive and the price of the fuel itself is also sometimes higher depending on the country in which it is bought. So a petrol-engined car would be cheaper to buy and the fuel is cheaper but you would use more of it. 10-20 years ago, diesel engines were also more sluggish in acceleration tests and were less environmentally clean. This has changed markedly since so that diesel engines are often found to be cleaner than petrol (resulting in paying less or no Road Tax where this is levied on CO2 emissions) and the addition of fuel injectors and other technologies has narrowed the difference between the two fuels' performance. Nanonic (talk) 21:23, 23 August 2015 (UTC)
 * "Clean" doesn't refer to CO2 emissions. The amount of CO2 produced by an engine relates pretty directly to how much fuel it burns (specifically to the carbon in that fuel), so a vehicle that produces less CO2 for the same journey is a more efficient one.  A cleaner engine is one that emits a smaller amount of air-polluting by-products such as carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, and sulfur oxides. See e.g. Clean Air Act (United States).  --65.94.50.17 (talk) 16:36, 24 August 2015 (UTC)
 * In the UK, the price of diesel has recently fallen below the price of petrol (gasoline) apparently due to "falling demand in Europe" (in British newspapers, Europe is that funny place on the wrong side of the English Channel). Alansplodge (talk) 22:33, 23 August 2015 (UTC)
 * In general, diesel is cheaper, since it is cheaper to raffinate. Diesel traditionally is used for utilitarian vehicules, and gasoline (benzin) traditionally is used for fast, individual cars and motorcycles. Recently diesel was developed as clean and "as fast" as benzin, because so many people use it on their cars who could have used benzin or earth-gas. Generalization of diesel is recent in the US and in America too, for different reasons that benzin was then cheap enough to be used in most vans and pickup trucks. Akseli9 (talk) 01:43, 24 August 2015 (UTC)
 * (In case it wasn't obvious, for "raffinate" read refine.) --65.94.50.17 (talk) 16:36, 24 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Diesel is also less volatile in storage, it is less flammable than petrol. This is especially useful when large quantities are required to be kept in a fuel tank, on a ship for instance. See Diesel_engine. Nanonic (talk) 21:25, 23 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Very true, and very true even for smaller boats like small sailing boats. Akseli9 (talk) 01:43, 24 August 2015 (UTC)


 * I'm guessing somewhat here, but I would expect that historically diesel engines were notably more expensive than petrol (gasoline) ones - their use of injectors and very high compression ratios would account for this. They were also notably more efficient and so only became economic on larger, more expensive vehicles expected to do considerable mileages.  However, both of these differences have narrowed with improvements to engineering, and so it is quite common now to have small cars with diesel engines.--Phil Holmes (talk) 13:41, 24 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Yes, in Europe diesel engines are traditionally more expensive to build, and fit more to high mileages utilitarian purpose to be worth the higher cost. However this was not true in the US, where petrol engines were built as strong as diesel engines, and where petrol engines were used in most vans and pickup trucks. The difference was already narrow in the US, mainly because both diesel and gasoline were cheap there, now the difference is narrowing for the opposite reason, because diesel and benzine are getting equally expensive. Akseli9 (talk) 14:04, 24 August 2015 (UTC)


 * Observations only: In the old days, diesel fuel was generally cheaper than gasoline. For quite a few years now, though, in the US at least, diesel has been noticeably more expensive than gas. The recent drop in petroleum prices has lowered the gas price, but the gap between gas and diesel is getting smaller, so diesel would seem to be dropping at a somewhat greater rate. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 15:47, 24 August 2015 (UTC)
 * This varies by location. Right now, in Los Angeles, diesel is significantly cheaper than gasoline.
 * When I moved to Texas in 2003, we drove a diesel U-Haul, and I remember thinking that it was too bad it was diesel, because at the time diesel was more expensive than gasoline in California. But my friend who was moving to the same university and sharing the U-Haul said that diesel was cheaper outside of California, and he was right.  I don't know what the reasons are for this.  By the way, gasoline has not dropped very much in Los Angeles (it's still over $4 at many stations) so maybe there's a shortage of refinery capacity or something. --Trovatore (talk) 17:33, 24 August 2015 (UTC)
 * First idea that comes to mind: California has its own policy about pollution and its own measurment of it which doesn't test the same microparticles in the air. In California, diesel exhaust was considered toxic and as so must have been extra-taxed. Akseli9 (talk) 18:13, 24 August 2015 (UTC)
 * That doesn't seem to explain why diesel is cheaper than gasoline at the moment. It's true it could have been part of the equation in 2003. --Trovatore (talk) 18:19, 24 August 2015 (UTC)
 * First idea that comes to mind: Californians have elected the opposite party at some point, one who uses different measurments for pollution (or one who promissed businesses and factories they were going to use cheap diesel if they elected them). Akseli9 (talk) 18:25, 24 August 2015 (UTC)

What drives the price differential between gasoline and diesel fuel ?
Clearly "supply and demand" is at the core, but what exactly has changed in the supply and demand that affected one more than the other ? (I imagine taxes might also be different, is that a factor ?) StuRat (talk) 16:49, 24 August 2015 (UTC)
 * At least in France, it is common knowledge that taxes are a huge factor in artificially creating these prices and differences. Akseli9 (talk) 17:10, 24 August 2015 (UTC)
 * It's the same in the UK - I think until a few years ago diesel was significantly cheaper (per litre) than petrol, but the tax rates were changed to make them more equal. Here is a (a few years old, so maybe outdated) breakdown of the prices. We also have "red diesel", intended for use by farmers etc, which has lower rates of duty. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 17:24, 24 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Yes, the red diesel is exactly the same but tainted red. Only difference is the tax rate. In France and in Finland too, then probably in the rest of Europe. Akseli9 (talk) 18:13, 24 August 2015 (UTC)
 * According to the BBC, the falling price of oil is because "faltering economic growth in resource-hungry countries like China is keeping a lid on demand for oil, while on the other hand there is a supply glut" and as regards diesel; "Recently, Saudi Arabia has ramped up production of ultra-low sulphur diesel for export to Europe - resulting in steeper falls for diesel than petrol." BTW, fuel duty is the same for both types in the UK - see the article linked by AndrewWTaylor above. Alansplodge (talk) 21:26, 24 August 2015 (UTC)