r/theydidthemath • u/joseWilsonDaFonseca • 1d ago
[Request] How long until the rubbing of sand destroy the name engraved on the gravestone?
661
u/Hiruma_Nitsuje 1d ago
Without knowing how deeply the letters are carved there is no way of knowing, but given that this is only done once a year I would think many thousands of years to the point that natural erosion would be more of a concern than somebody wiping some sand on it once a year.
137
u/ShakinBacon24 1d ago
If anything, isn’t there also an argument to make that filling in the cavities of the lettering protects them from being eroded by sea wind?
81
u/courtlandthethreeth 1d ago
I think in addition to that, there would be build up of dirt, debris, mildew on the stone, so this once a year would likely just scrub some of that off.
23
u/OHrangutan 1d ago
That sand will dry and fall out pretty quickly. Couple of days and a sprinkle of rain and gusts later nothing will be there.
9
2
u/kbcool 1d ago
It's not the lettering that erodes it's the rock around it, ending up in it being level with the carving.
If anything the erosion also makes the carving deeper, but much slower than the erosion around it
1
u/ShakinBacon24 1d ago
Well sure, the lettering is an empty space and so cannot be eroded - I should have phrased that better.
1
97
u/OldGeekWeirdo 1d ago
Since these are war graves, I'd imagine that the government will replace it should that happen.
It would be a far different situation if this wasn't in a veteran's cemetery and there were private headstones.
14
u/The_Ghast_Hunter 1d ago
The engineer's answer.
1
u/reredthxt 2h ago
Defense contractor answer, the government is too cheap and disorganized to do that.
21
u/mkujoe 1d ago
More interested in: how many cubic meters of sand needed. We know all the letters from the known names and bio information and the engraving depth
13
u/throwaway-15879 1d ago
More than 4
6
u/Secret-Ad-7909 1d ago
Modern pickup truck short beds can hold about 2 yards. You’re calling for more than 2 of those?
1
1
u/throwaway-15879 1d ago
4!
5
u/factorion-bot 1d ago
Factorial of 4 is 24
This action was performed by a bot | [Source code](http://f.r0.fyi)
1
22
u/virtual_human 1d ago
It's a very solemn place to visit and it's a shame that that America is mostly gone. When I went in 2009 there was a group of very young German soldiers there, nice to see. A few people gave them the stink eye but most people understood why, I assume, they were there.
54
u/Daddy2NZ 1d ago
Lest we forget. Many countries who fought to liberate Europe, have forgotten. But the many towns and small communities in Europe haven't forgotten. Even teach it in their schools. While countries like UK, AU, NZ, now are all focused on internal take overs.
35
u/akamsteeg 1d ago edited 1d ago
In The Netherlands, there's a program for people to adopt a wargrave. You assume the responsibility of taking care for it, visiting it for example on their date of birth and date of death, learning about the deceased, staying in contact with their family, keeping the cemetery's library on the deceased updated, etc. It's very popular, there are waiting lists. People, often families, participating in this are very proud of it but never advertise it. This is for the people who liberated The Netherlands. Period.
Btw, the Polish general Maczek commanded the 1st Polish Armoured Division that liberated parts of The Netherlands. He could not return back home after the war and ended up as a bartender in the UK. When the Dutch people found out his daughter was very ill, they raised money for treatment. Later on, he got a pension from the Dutch government. He's buried next to his soldiers at the cemetery in Breda, The Netherlands.
13
u/ziplock9000 1d ago
Utter shite. The UK has nor forgotten.
9
u/brandidge 1d ago
You’ve got people cheering people terrorising their community. You’ve civilians calling for refugees to be shot and imprisoned. They might wear a poppy but they don’t seem to understand what the soldiers fought for.
0
4
u/Capitan_Scythe 1d ago
There are people calling the Royal National Lifeboat Institute traitors for rescuing other humans because they're asylum seekers.
The Portsmouth lifeboat station had to be temporarily closed because of the abuse they received. It got bad enough that the police had to step in.
These are volunteers who risk their lives saving anyone in distress, regardless of their origin or the weather, who have been called "scum" and "yellowbellies".
You can try to argue that these are a minority of shitty people but the fact they felt so confident to act openly is a disgusting indication of the current political landscape.
But sure, let's all wear a poppy once a year and pretend that we still honour the call to arms to fight on behalf of another nation against facism.
2
u/Upstairs-Hedgehog575 1d ago
Internal take overs?
The U.K. still teaches it in their schools. We haven’t forgotten and I doubt Australia and New Zealand have either.
1
1
-4
u/The_B4dM4n_Bill 1d ago
? Why would they? Americans barely learn about the rest of the world in school. Id expect it to be the same in a vice versa scenario
11
7
u/Dry-Lifeguard1081 1d ago
My American history class on specifically this had to list the 5 names of the beaches and the main countries who took said beaches, then list out the other countries that took part.
-1
u/cajunjoel 1d ago
The fact that americans don't learn about this is a failing of the american government at large, not the american people.
0
u/RelevantTrash9745 1d ago
The American legal system itself states that ignorance is not a defense lol
8
u/Fuzzy_Park109 1d ago edited 1d ago
This war was a turning point for the planet, the one that ushered in the Age of Atomic Weapons. Absolutely new levels of warfare.
They have allowed us to get farther then we would have without them. A protracted global Forever war of ever improved chemical and biological weapons awaited this planet in rat infested miles long trenches.
We have navigated some of the best outcomes possible while living in one of the those middle of the road timelines that could have been so much worse. Star Trek was on the table, but so was The Road.
Proxy wars are preferable to an irradiated wasteland devoid of life, which is preferable to a hellscape of the global combat that never ends, until it does, this outcome being equally devoid of life.. We just need to keep holding our head above water, just keep holding out. 50/50 if we'l get there again, and another 50/50 if we'll choose StarTrek oven Eulisium/Terminator, but we're still kicking and maintaining a large and diverse population/Gene Pool.
We're so close.
2
u/C0RNFIELDS 18h ago
I like to believe that the Great War was avoidable, and that it's start was a concise decision by those who had not yet experienced fully industrialized warfare.
-14
-1
u/Leroyf1969 1d ago
I’d guess some sort of protectant once the gold is there would be good. But I do think this is a nice gesture of gratitude toward the soldiers who fought for them.
•
u/AutoModerator 1d ago
General Discussion Thread
This is a [Request] post. If you would like to submit a comment that does not either attempt to answer the question, ask for clarification, or explain why it would be infeasible to answer, you must post your comment as a reply to this one. Top level (directly replying to the OP) comments that do not do one of those things will be removed.
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.