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Superheavy element

Hi. I was wondering if you were interested in looking into improving superheavy element after you're done with island of stability. I recently saw an interesting article that I think would make a great addition to the topic; the article was about how this research is of little practical interest and the difficulties (primarily, financial) it faces because of that. The article is in Russian, but I could send you what Google Translate can make out it, regardless of whether you will do it or just would be curious to read the article. This motivated me to add that at first but I have my hands full and I thought this may be interesting for you.

@Double sharp: you may be curious to read this as well.--R8R (talk) 12:56, 7 September 2019 (UTC)

@R8R: I would certainly be interested in taking up that project in the near future (provided that this semester doesn't prove too tasking). As a matter of fact, this would be a perfect opportunity to include some other information I read about superheavy elements—as island of stability deals specifically and exclusively with nuclear properties, this is the other half of the puzzle. Now I am curious about this article, and even if it's a machine translation, I'll still see if I can integrate it. Thanks for sharing this! ComplexRational (talk) 13:50, 7 September 2019 (UTC)

@R8R: I for one am interested too – even as I stand frustrated enough with writing a lede for the properties section of Al that I have half a mind to just start spamming out about the chemistry and go back to that later... Double sharp (talk) 15:41, 7 September 2019 (UTC)

Great! As a matter of fact, I did have the impression this article was a translation from English, and now I have found the original text. Bloomberg is an appropriate place to complain at the expense of this, isn't it? :)

Definitely worth mentioning if we compile a section describing difficulties of SHE research. ComplexRational (talk) 14:34, 29 September 2019 (UTC)

(later addition to this thread) I just found the entire issue of Bloomberg Businessweek in which that article was published, it's here. It's a special issue dedicated to all of the elements; not all elements get their individual articles (the original article covers all from 93 through 118). Some elements are labeled off into small boxes as "(mostly) useless" and some are described in small boxes titled, "What if you eat it?", which shows not all elements are treated very seriously (the bit about polonium is the best reflection of that). Perhaps one could entertain themselves with this for a while.

I don't know if I'll ever use it again in an element article (it is good to make the point that production of superheavy elements is expensive), who knows, but since I mentioned the article in this thread, I think it would be appropriate to share the whole issue it was in.--R8R (talk) 16:14, 18 January 2020 (UTC)

Hmm...the bit on SHEs was an interesting read, thank you. It does make a few important points and has some nice trivia, but it admittedly is not as serious and has a few inaccuracies (e.g. "an extra-stable titanium isotope with six more neutrons than standard titanium"; Ti is certainly not extra-stable and Ti is certainly not standard titanium). On that note, I'm not completely sure what to make of it, but the whole issue could be a nice thing to read on the side. ComplexRational (talk) 19:30, 18 January 2020 (UTC)

It comes as no surprise that the issue is not consistently correct as I was able to find two errors in the original material alone: the Japanese researchers were not after element 112, they were after element 113; and credit for discovery of element 102 is not shared between Berkeley and Dubna but is rather assigned to Dubna alone. Still, there may be certain things that you haven't considered but you can now that you've read about them (like how I had not considered the cost of the SHE production), and you can look them up now that you know they exist and may be of interest. I'll see if that could be the case for any element I'll write about in the future, that's what I'll make of it. Maybe you could find this idea worthy of consideration, too.--R8R (talk) 12:27, 19 January 2020 (UTC)

Glad we are on the same page here! To contrast this, however, I should mention that I've heard Oganessian say that while these experiments are expensive, they also lead to good by-products, like the experiment on element 118 also gave us some cool material, some kind of a nano-fiber..? As you can see, I have clearly forgotten the details, but I think this should be interesting for you as well. This should not be to difficult to find and correct what I obviously remember incorrectly: Double sharp sent me a bunch of videos from Dubna and asked me to watch them and tell what was in those videos, and this was mentioned in one of those, so I'll later check it up and tell you what it is exactly in that video. Ping me if I haven't done that in a couple of weeks.--R8R (talk) 19:33, 29 September 2019 (UTC)

Do you still have the links? I could even email Double sharp later – this will indeed prove interesting. ComplexRational (talk) 20:38, 29 September 2019 (UTC)

Seems to be User talk:R8R/Archive 5#if only I could understand Russian. Double sharp (talk) 04:08, 30 September 2019 (UTC)

Thank you, that's precisely it. I found it in video 2, the roughly one minute long part that starts at 6:15. I will transcribe it to you later.--R8R (talk) 06:33, 30 September 2019 (UTC)

So, for a bit of a context: this is a report from Saturday news, where big events from the week are recollected and analyzed more scrupulously than in a typical news report. These news contains extensive (by TV news standards) reports, 5 to 10 minutes long. This one was dedicated to JINR and specifically Oganessian, after whom an element had been named recently.

Host, narrating the clip: "During the reconstruction of the material history of our Universe, scientists operate with another beautiful image: a ship that goes across the ocean of high science but catches into its net a lot of various things, seemingly marginal but very useful in practical life. Foe example, next to the big accelerator works its younger brother. Here, a phrase that is not very common for our science is heard: profitable production. Business? Raw material? (Oganessian and the host approach a handful of transparent film rolls) Well, just some kind of film like any other. I tried to get impressed. (Host, into the camera, behind a sheet of film) "And we can even look through it." And here, at the next display stand, Oganessian shows us the extra zoomed in photo of a human hair and to the same scale, holes that result on the same film after special treatment. The diameter of the holes is 1 micron! And, for example, the diameter of bacteria is 40. Turns out, it's a membrane! (Oganessian) "You can drink water from a puddle. You can be absolutely calm. Not a single bacterium will pass." A great invention both for the army and for medicine. And what gave birth to this? Works for this very oganesson did. And to think that just a thousandth of a second of lifetime, just one atom per month! That's, by the way, why all properties of this new element still have not been studied. And scientists all across the world study them. And even now Dubna does not break its relations even with America." From there, Oganessian says that the difficult relations between our countries are not a problem for the JINR and takes delight in that, but the part that you're most interested in here is over.
So, this is not a lot, but I could sometime look closely about this film and what it has to do with oganesson if you're curious. Well, I am, so I will, but you asking me to do it can speed that up a little.--R8R (talk) 18:18, 4 October 2019 (UTC)

@Double sharp: definitely, save the lead text for last. A lead section is supposed to summarize the article, and to summarize an article, you need the said article, right? Same goes here. At first I tried the more intuitive approach: lead first, details second. It didn't go well because I wrote the lead section without too much knowledge and then I got the knowledge, and I was eager to add that, some things were worth adding, some were not, the list of what I wanted in the lead section changed constantly, and it had to be touched upon over and over. So just forget about it for now and by all means, feel free to do the spamming.--R8R (talk) 17:08, 7 September 2019 (UTC)

@R8R and Double sharp: I assume this project means converting superheavy element from a redirect into an article? If so, I'll start some outlining and drafting. ComplexRational (talk) 14:34, 29 September 2019 (UTC)

Oh! I didn't realize superheavy element was not an article of its own. There is generally little non-overlap between the superheavy elements and the transuranium elements, so I think it's better to develop the existing article.--R8R (talk) 19:33, 29 September 2019 (UTC)

Probably transactinide element will be our target then. Transuranium elements also include 93-103, so I am thinking of boldly retargeting superheavy element there as that is the precise term. ComplexRational (talk) 20:38, 29 September 2019 (UTC)

(Talkpage stalking) Allow me to note: Island of stability is under peer review only now. After that, we need User:CR to make it an FA ;-). Only then CR is free to spend time elsewhere. -DePiep (talk) 21:09, 29 September 2019 (UTC)

Come to think of superheavy element, I remembered an old graph that once was in tennessine (back when it was called ununseptium) that may be useful for the article should we discuss decay modes closely. The work on which this graph is based accounts for alpha decay, cluster decay, and cold fission. The work itself is easy to find in the internet for free.--R8R (talk) 20:38, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

@R8R: Maybe that would be useful to demonstrate increasing stability towards alpha decay, but that graph is almost certainly wrong when considering total half-lives – namely the importance of SF and β branches – both of which will likely be the most significant decay modes once alpha decay partial half-lives increase several orders of magnitude beyond N = 184. I thus wouldn't advise using it unless we somehow can tie it to something specifically about alpha decay. For a more complete and correct picture, I always find myself rereading this presentation; its model of all decay modes is not unreasonable and is the most complete set of predictions I can find. I'm not sure if we can upload files of those graphs, though. ComplexRational (talk) 21:33, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

Talking about alpha decay, at least to some extent, was what I had in mind. I begin to think whether superheavy element should have a section titled "Introduction" at all, although this is not a proposal to remove the content; merely to split the section. On the other hand, "Introduction" sounds inviting, that's a good reason to keep it... I'm pondering this. Regardless, what you got from JINR is indeed better (thank you for sharing), that will be very useful. I don't think there will be problems; realistically, we may have to change the color scheme in case there are overly cautious Wikipedians.--R8R (talk) 18:35, 20 March 2020 (UTC)

I think the content of that section looks pretty good as is, only I wouldn't consider it "introduction". Once we do some more work on the article, I'd rename the section "synthesis" (or as a subsection of a section "synthesis") that explains how SHEs are synthesized. This would then be parallel to sections about history (which I started expanding but am lagging on), chemical properties (a rework of the bottom), and decay modes & nuclear stability (including some of these charts, as well as information from several other articles explaining the models). We can outline this more on the article talk page, and I shockingly might have extra time to work on this in the midst of this pandemic (all my classes are online only for at least a month now). (That said, stay safe, and best wishes.) ComplexRational (talk) 18:47, 20 March 2020 (UTC)

And regarding images: the main question is, are these considered simple enough or hard facts that they fall automatically into the public domain? Or could there be licensing for these slides (worst case, we might have to wiggle our way through fair use)?

I also recall a while back studying these charts extensively and creating my own version of File:Superheavy_decay_modes_predicted.png using KTUY data (when I had a lot more free time and nothing better to do), but that would likely inherit the copyright (or lack thereof) of the sources from which the data is derived. Plus, though of course I would never fabricate data, I can only give my word that it accurately represents the same information as the slides. ComplexRational (talk) 18:54, 20 March 2020 (UTC)

The existing section is certainly not bad, but I don't yet have a picture in my head of what's the final result of superheavy element is going to look like. The question is, there are currently two subsections; should they remain together? The section attempts to cover the entire lifetime of a superheavy nucleus, but the existing text does not yet mention how chemical (or physical) experiments are run, and that, too, is going to need space. And one section may be too lengthy for this, so we'll need two; but if there are two, it may be that we will need greater distinction between them: the current section is a continuous story and we may need two separate, even if interrelated, ones instead. But do we want to lose that great continuous story? A Synthesis section would need to pay more attention to details like cross sections... there is a lot of room for thinking here.

As for when we start to work on it: I am not entirely sure when that will happen exactly. It will, have no doubts about that, but I don't know when. First of all, I feel a little held back by how there's an FAC that's about to begin and thus it feels like I can't really focus on anything else (but for the time being, it keeps not beginning and thus has me waiting). But soon that's going to stop to matter as much because soon I'm going to have to finish off my master's thesis, soon the final examination period begins, and this is likely to keep me busy for a while. And as for what I promised to you, history of the periodic table comes before that. It can be debated if you want to but then I'm not sure I'll get back to it in the end (though I'd want to, so let's keep the tasks in the original order).

That's fine, let's get Hs through FAC first (how long do you think until we can start?) and then we'll check in on history of the periodic table. If I find any good resources in the meantime, I'll post them here or at the article talk pages. ComplexRational (talk) 21:37, 20 March 2020 (UTC)

Let's say I hope soon enough :) I'll be curious to read what you'll get, if anything. I have yet to think how to integrate those links I added to Talk:History of the periodic table (I recall you sent me some of those even if I don't remember which ones); feel free to add more to that list.--R8R (talk) 22:27, 20 March 2020 (UTC)

Thank you for your concerns; stay healthy yourself! (How long has it been since you last washed your hands?) I generally think I'll be fine but taking precautions like washing my hands more often and not touching my face is still a good idea; I hope you think the same. As for me, the change has been that I no longer have to go to work because I work from home instead. I also don't have to go to the university, but I get my tasks to do via the internet instead... all of this doesn't result in much additional spare time for me, unfortunately.

Yes, these are good precuations; I say the number one thing right now is constant vigilance (and not too long ago did I sanitize or wash my hands). Spare time, of course though, does not always translate into extra productivity here unfortunately: if I still have my exams combined with the difficulties of doing everything from home, I'm still not sure how much substantial content I can contribute while we ride this out. But I'll try my best, and good luck on your thesis and exams when the time for those arrives. ComplexRational (talk) 21:37, 20 March 2020 (UTC)

I recently read an article on sanitation: different children had their hands cleaned by different things: some by soap, some by nothing, some by hand sanitizer, some had touched their laptops, and there was a control sandwich not touched at all. Then were asked to touch sandwiches. Those sandwiches were packed and kept away from light for a month. The sandwiches were all covered by ugly bacteria, and the bread looked very far from edible. Two exceptions were the untouched control sandwich and the sandwich touched by children who had washed their hands with soap. Surprisingly (for me), hand sanitizer did not perform well at all. You may want to keep that in mind (the experiment has been described here). Presumably you'll still do more than I will in the next couple of months. Thank for your wishes; I'll make it, it's just going to take some time to get there, but I am confident in the upcoming success.

I still prefer soap and water as much as possible. And though things are deteriorating all around, I think we'll make it okay. ComplexRational (talk) 15:26, 24 March 2020 (UTC)

Based on my past experience with images, I think they don't fall into the public domain but they have data that can be redrawn and published under any license good enough for Commons. (Not necessarily by hand, of course, but making it visibly different to represent the same data should be enough. The thing susceptible to copyright here is design, not the data itself.) Have that in mind but don't worry too much about it.--R8R (talk) 21:27, 20 March 2020 (UTC)

We'll work on this further then. I'll have to dig through my older files, and I can email you said image if you'd like to take a look (the design is not at all aesthetic, it mirrors the other file I mentioned using different numerical data). ComplexRational (talk) 21:37, 20 March 2020 (UTC)

I'd be curious to take a look; I drew some pictures a while ago myself but they were lost with the previous laptop.--R8R (talk) 22:27, 20 March 2020 (UTC)

I emailed it two days ago. ComplexRational (talk) 15:26, 24 March 2020 (UTC)

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New Page Patrol December Newsletter

Hello ComplexRational,

Year in review

It has been a productive year for New Page Patrol as we've roughly cut the size of the New Page Patrol queue in half this year. We have been fortunate to have a lot of great work done by Rosguill who was the reviewer of the most pages and redirects this past year. Thanks and credit go to JTtheOG and Onel5969 who join Rosguill in repeating in the top 10 from last year. Thanks to John B123, Hughesdarren, and Mccapra who all got the NPR permission this year and joined the top 10. Also new to the top ten is DannyS712 bot III, programmed by DannyS712 which has helped to dramatically reduce the number of redirects that have needed human patrolling by patrolling certain types of redirects (e.g. for differences in accents) and by also patrolling editors who are on on the redirect whitelist.

Reviewer of the Year

John B123 has been named reviewer of the year for 2020. John has held the permission for just over 6 months and in that time has helped cut into the queue by reviewing more than 18,000 articles. His talk page shows his efforts to communicate with users, upholding NPP's goal of nurturing new users and quality over quantity.

NPP Technical Achievement Award

As a special recognition and thank you DannyS712 has been awarded the first NPP Technical Achievement Award. His work programming the bot has helped us patrol redirects tremendously - more than 60,000 redirects this past year. This has been a large contribution to New Page Patrol and definitely is worthy of recognition.

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18:17, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

TNN

When you tagged TNN (nuclear physics) for RfD, you forgot to actuallly create an RfD nomination for it. –LaundryPizza03 (dc̄) 03:57, 20 December 2020 (UTC)

@LaundryPizza03: That's because I added it to the RfD you created for TMS (nuclear physics) on 16 December. The rationale is exactly the same (as DePiep and I determined at WT:ELEM), and I made a note of it there. But thank you anyway for the notice. ComplexRational (talk) 12:39, 20 December 2020 (UTC)

WP:ANI Disruptive behaviour by DePiep

Thanks for your post.

The nub of the ANI is that DePiep, in breach of BRD, reverted my revert.

If this kind of behaviour is regarded as acceptable then I have no business at ANI.

Your thoughts?

As a matter of courtesy, I gave notice of my intent to revert. Discussion followed. Only when that concluded, and Double sharp said I could do what I felt appropriate, subject to comments from others, did I revert. Even then I started editing to address some of Double sharp's concerns. That is, I edit in the context of comments made by WP:ELEM members.

Re, "the project has nothing to show for these unwieldy threads." Our exercise in continuous cooperative editing resulted in about 120 improvement edits to the periodic table article. It also resulted in about 30 improvements to our article on Metals close to the border between metals and nonmetals.

DePiep has often commented about how hard it is to follow the discussions at WP:ELEM. He has previously engaged in housekeeping of kind I undertook. YBG was the only one to complain.

Please do not conflate OR and Group 3 with my WP:ANI post, which is solely concerned with a breach of BRD by DePiep.

Re, "Regarding BRD, the objective should be for DePiep, Sandbh, and any other involved editors to engage in civil discussion so that no edit wars erupt and the article is not the victim of a dispute." I attempted to do so, with DePiep, on my talk page, before going to WP:ANI. You can see the non-result.

The solution is straightforward. Allow me to revert DS deletions, as any WP editor has the right to do. At that point, if an editor does not agree with my revert, then the onus is on that editor to establish consensus to remove the reinstated material, rather than to revert the revert, as DePiep did, in breach of BRD. That is what brought me to WP:ANI.

I hope I've made myself clear.

Thanks again ComplexRational, Sandbh (talk) 23:38, 26 December 2020 (UTC)

Thank you for reaching out here, Sandbh. I will leave my reply here short so I can keep everything in one place at ANI.

Probably because of how long the talk page discussions have become, I might have missed a few details, and I will limit my further commentary to this specific issue pertaining to BRD. I only mentioned the other stuff because it has become intertwined and this case (your OP at ANI) seems to be a different symptom of the same underlying problem that is plaguing our project.

As a very general principle, you are right in that (unexplained) reverts of reverts are not advised and constitute edit warring (that would break BRD and eventually 3RR). However, in this case, several editors objected to your reversion at WT:ELEM after you posted your notice, so I'm not sure that proceeding with the revert was in line with any discussion that was had. The BRD cycle was broken when editors raised objections to your intent to revert, so we cannot strictly apply it afterwards; your revert would be considered a "bold edit" after a new rough consensus was formed, and DePiep's revert would form part of a new cycle, so I still see no clear breach on DePiep's part.

It is not a matter of me allowing you to revert anything, but rather using BRD as a rough guideline to keep discussions on track when they derail. Your point is clear, and I may reread a few older threads, but this is how I see it. ComplexRational (talk) 15:53, 27 December 2020 (UTC)

ComplexRational, thank you.

DePiep said don't revert, discuss right away. YBG said, "please, please discuss before reverting".

I did as they asked.

It's ironic that, by playing the "team player" card I've been re-reverted by DePiep, in breach of BRD. Not wanting to breach BRD myself, I now find myself in the curious situation of having to obtain consensus to restore what DePiep re-reverted. I appreciate you may see things differently. It sees like I would've been better off exercising my right to revert, which is just a part of consensus building, in any event. The onus would then have shifted to other members of WP:ELEM to achieve consensus for removing the material.* Anyway, lesson learnt. (Which seems to be, here at WP, don't be afraid to exercise your rights, and don't give them away.) That said, it still goes against my grain.

• Maybe that wouldn't've helped given it would've represented yet more effort on behalf of others

I'm discussing this here since I don't want to contribute to the ANI wall of text. As well, you're a member of WP:ELEM, with more inside knowledge than external editors.

As I read it, you follow what's going on; that's reassuring. Sandbh (talk) 06:46, 28 December 2020 (UTC)

Sometimes, as it seems in this case, a revert is not necessary if there is a rough consensus endorsing the bold edit. I believe that had you reverted without notifying ELEM, a discussion would have ensued and resulted in your edit being undone anyway (if we apply BRD and assume everyone would hold the same opinions). BRD is not an indisputable set-in-stone policy, so as I noted here and at ANI, we should take whatever actions that will allow constructive article work and consensus building. I, quite frankly, also don't want to immerse myself in ANI or conflicts with any editors, so I will probably be limiting my involvement in this matter. ComplexRational (talk) 19:31, 28 December 2020 (UTC)

Dear ComplexRational, I obviously need help if, in my best endeavours, I'm facing the prospect of a topic ban. Not help in a mental sense; help in how to meet WP expectations sense. I'm obviously missing something.

Is my goose cooked?

Appreciate any help or support you could provide, or not acknowledging your desire for limited involvement.

thank you, --- Sandbh (talk) 22:36, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

PS: I've asked EdChem, R8R and DePiep for help, too.

@Sandbh: It seems that now the topic ban will come to pass, and as much as I do not want to engage in conflict, I must say that it is probably a win-win for you and ELEM. Some of the most recent comments at ANI—those from YBG and EdChem—sum up what seems to be the problem: conducting research and publishing in journals and conducting research and publishing on WP are guided by different sets of rules and therefore require different approaches, both in content writing/presentation and working with peers. Nobody doubts your expertise in the subject matter.

In the WP expectations sense, my advice would be to take a semi-wikibreak or focus on writing and collaborating in a different area altogether, review WT:ELEM and the behavior/actions of editors that have been unambiguously constructive, and always follow the core content policies—verifiability, neutral point of view, and no original research—above all else. This even means treating your own research as you would treat any other source when using it on WP, so as not to be influenced by your opinion or give undue weight to anything. Assuming the TBAN permits it (which I believe it should), my talk page is open if you have any other WP-related questions. ComplexRational (talk) 21:04, 2 January 2021 (UTC)

Nickel and helium

Sorry to bother you on a holiday evening. No hurry on this either. But you seem like the best person to help me with this question.

I noticed more than a year ago that we have similar claims on isotopes of nickel and at Magic_number_(physics)#Doubly_magic but they didnt make sense to me, and I felt I didnt understand them quite well enough to figure it out. You changed the one on the nickel page, but would you feel comfortable also changing the same claim on the magic number page? Specifically, it says

Nickel-48, discovered in 1999, is the most proton-rich magic nuclide known beyond helium-3.

Or is that one actually correct, despite being very similarly worded to the other? If it is correct, how do we explain, for example, oxygen-11? Is that magic or is it not?

Thanks, —Soap— 22:29, 31 December 2020 (UTC)

I should note, also, that I'm the one who added the word magic to that sentence. Previously it had identified nickel-48 as the most proton-rich nuclide known beyond helium-3 with no other qualification. —Soap— 22:31, 31 December 2020 (UTC)

@Soap: Thank you for your message, and it's a mostly ordinary day (like most of 2020 has been).

The claim on the magic number page was not incorrect, but I changed its wording so that it is more accurate: Nickel-48, discovered in 1999, is the most proton-rich doubly magic nuclide known.

In both cases, the original wording did not clearly distinguish magic from doubly magic: the former is a nuclide with a magic number of protons or neutrons, and the latter is a nuclide with a magic number of protons and neutrons (i.e. both are magic numbers). Nickel-48 has 28 protons and 20 neutrons, which are both magic numbers, so it is noteworthy for being doubly magic. Every isotope of nickel has a magic number of protons (28), which is not all that special by comparison. The same goes for oxygen-11 and helium-3: they have magic numbers of protons (respectively 8 and 2) but not magic numbers of neutrons. (Oxygen-16 and helium-4 would be the doubly magic isotopes of these elements.)

As a result, classifying them as having one magic number is correct, but not noteworthy. Nickel-48 is, in fact, the most proton-rich doubly magic nuclide known, though I don't think it's the most proton-rich nuclide known beyond helium-3: oxygen-11 and potassium-31 both have a greater proton excess. Both claims should be more accurate now (so thank you for highlighting the second one).

If you have any other questions, feel free to ask. ComplexRational (talk) 23:27, 31 December 2020 (UTC)

Precious anniversary

Precious

One year!

--Gerda Arendt (talk) 09:32, 2 January 2021 (UTC)

@Gerda Arendt: Thank you! ComplexRational (talk) 15:10, 2 January 2021 (UTC)

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Atoms and antiquity

I don't really mind one way or another, but this edit might need a clarification. While the modern atomic theory was indeed initiated after Lavoisier (in fact, even Mendeleev was not too keen on the idea long after he produced his table which was based on recurrences of atomic weights: he still thought that the concept may be useful in a similar fashion to how quantum physics is often taught in oversimplification nowadays, not entirely correct, but easier to understand), the concept of "atom" has been known since ancient Greece, and I took the word "atom" from Lavoisier himself. See also atomism.--R8R (talk) 10:44, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

@R8R: When making that edit, I was thinking to avoid introducing a term before it came into (historical use), in the same way I avoided mentioning isotopes later in the article (when I wrote that section) before they were known as isotopes (c. 1913). In this case, some form of "atomic" theory—the existence of smallest indivisible units of substances—existed, but modern atoms came later. I'd wonder if there is a way to keep this clear or otherwise consistently develop the article to reflect historical developments in chronological order. If you (or I) can find a source saying that Lavoisier explicitly mentioned "atoms", we can add it back, but I haven't found anything so far and (at least for now).

Hopefully in the next few weeks, before the spring semester starts, I can take a closer look at the article. I noticed that you decided to break it down into subsections; might I ask how much expansion will be in the making to address everything that is relevant but not go into too much details about developments not closely related to the periodic table itself? I apologize that I haven't been actively working on the article recently, but I'm open to ideas as to how to proceed. ComplexRational (talk) 16:51, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

The quote from Lavoisier in which he uses the word “atom” is given right in the citation that followed that sentence, you don’t even have to click a link or anything :) but as I said, it doesn’t really matter, not at this point at least, because I want to rewrite that section anyway, as well as the one before it.

I think Comprehensive formalizations and Priority dispute and recognition are already good, at least in terms of size. I also think Inert gases and ether is mostly good; although I need to add the changes Ramsay had in mind all this time, but that cannot add more than two paragraphs to the entire section. Atomic theory and isotopes may need a bit more work, probably a few more paragraphs, but probably also not too much. Later expansions will need more content. The other three sections need more research from me before I could make a judgment on how long they should be.

In general, I think having too much is better than having too little, because that is easier to fix. We can always do that later. I normally do that after I have added everything I may want to add. Not to mention that research that goes into it makes the article better. And last but not least, you also get to learn something interesting that you wouldn't learn otherwise.

No problem about inactivity; real life goes first, and also given how our project did nothing last few months but discuss and argue, that didn’t invite editors to help the project, so it doesn’t come as a surprise one way or another. I hope you’ll be able to get to do something soon, of course, now that you may have some spare time, and our disputes have come to a conclusion of sorts.—R8R (talk) 18:03, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

I just thought about something else. Don't worry too much about whether whether you have added too much already; instead, keep looking for answers until you have no more questions. That's something can recommend because that's what I do. Once you know that much, you'll have some idea about what is important and worth mentioning and what isn't. I don't think I have a perfect answer for that myself, but it's fine. As long as you're giving it your best and you like the result, others probably will like it, too. So don't worry too much about how long an article should be and instead, ask yourself whether what you're looking at is important or not; if you're not sure, it could be worth something, so add it and think about it once more later. If the final result is somehow too long, you can always fix that later by either contracting your text or starting a subarticle (after forking content from a main article, I got, for example, compounds of fluorine or history of aluminium).--R8R (talk) 15:48, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

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On 12 January 2021, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article History of Atalanta B.C., which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. The fact was ... that Atalanta reached the semifinals of the European Cup Winners' Cup in 1988 while playing in the Italian second tier? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/History of Atalanta B.C.. You are welcome to check how many pageviews the nominated article or articles got while on the front page (here's how, History of Atalanta B.C.), and if they received a combined total of at least 416.7 views per hour (ie, 5,000 views in 12 hours or 10,000 in 24), the hook may be added to the statistics page. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to suggest it on the Did you know talk page.

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Electron configurations past 121

Do you think we should change the infoboxes to show multiple possible configurations there? Because there isn't agreement once 121 is passed... Double sharp (talk) 08:37, 2 February 2021 (UTC)

@Double sharp: I'd say so, following the same rationale to avoid UNDUE weight. For 122, I think RS agree that it's one of two possibilities (120 + 7d 8p or 120 + 8p). For 123, there are also two possibilities said to be extremely close in energy level, though that's still in userspace for now. In the cases of 124 and 126, I don't recall exactly how many possibilities were published, but I'd say we should include them all unless one is clearly favored among independent studies. And for each of these elements, we should still probably omit Aufbau because if there's one thing our sources agree on, it's that Aufbau breaks down after 120. ComplexRational (talk) 15:53, 2 February 2021 (UTC)

Sounds good to me. Aufbau can probably be kept in discussion, as V.I.Goldansky predicted it in early days of the subject. (Only have second-hand ref from Fricke 10.1007/BFb0116498). But since nobody thinks it will be accurate, I'd say not to put it in the infobox, just to say in the text "configurations blah blah have been predicted for E124, all are different from the 5g8s Aufbau gives you".

That's what I had in mind. ComplexRational (talk) 17:40, 3 February 2021 (UTC)

Come to think of it, though, isn't this precisely the situation similar to the categorisation one where there isn't consensus among sources? In which case maybe instead of cluttering an infobox we could write "predictions vary" and point to the text? Double sharp (talk) 03:46, 4 February 2021 (UTC)

They are indeed very similar situations after 120. I wouldn't oppose saying "predictions vary" for 121+ in the infobox; the articles already explain somewhat how predictions vary. ComplexRational (talk) 22:27, 4 February 2021 (UTC)

Maybe 121, then, since it seems all calculations expect 8s8p? Double sharp (talk) 02:54, 5 February 2021 (UTC)

I think I read one source predicting  7d 8s as the ground state, but the majority agree on  8s 8p and the former as a low-lying excited state. I'll see if I can find that, but 121 looks to have just enough of a consensus in any case to remain undisputed in the infobox. ComplexRational (talk) 20:25, 5 February 2021 (UTC)

Should we maybe do something about Electron configurations of the elements (data page) and the table in Extended periodic table too? I'd say the latter should be replaced by something giving all possibilities; the data page should probably be curtailed at 121 or maybe even 118 where the known elements end... Double sharp (talk) 15:41, 3 February 2021 (UTC)

I definitely agree that the latter should include all possibilities. We can do that by giving an inline citation for each prediction (thus having several in each cell), or if there are several sets of predictions from independent sources, we can give a column for each and include an "other predictions" for special cases (e.g. the one paper specifically on 123). I feel more inclined to go with the latter, in which case we can even include Aufbau for comparison if appropriate. As for the data page, I'd say to stop at 120 (maybe 121): 120 is pretty much always predicted to be 8s, 121 I'm not sure about, and after 121 different sources definitely diverge. ComplexRational (talk) 17:40, 3 February 2021 (UTC)

P.S. I wish there were more cites for the Aufbau configurations and how high energy they might be. So far I only found it for 121. Because I do want to know: how bad is the electronic repulsion in the 5g shell? Madelung is not really dead at 121 because 5g8s is still at chemically low enough energies, but the horror story would be if 5g interelectronic repulsion was so bad at some point that, say, a neutral 126 atom as 5g8s would spontaneously ionise. I don't know of anyone who has addressed this (must be hard) but I'd consider it the real failure of Aufbau, following Jorgensen's idea about irrelevant irregularities. I guess it must be somehow considered dead in the water around the high 130s as 8s drowns into the core before the period's over and 5g stubbornly clings to life a while longer. Double sharp (talk) 15:52, 3 February 2021 (UTC)

Relevant paper. A second is 10.1063/1.1672080. Double sharp (talk) 16:02, 4 February 2021 (UTC)

I was only able to find a copy of the second, which I will soon read through in full. Do you know where the first is available? ComplexRational (talk) 22:27, 4 February 2021 (UTC)

I can email you a copy. ;) Though I think you'll have to send me something first, so I can reply and attach. Double sharp (talk) 02:53, 5 February 2021 (UTC)

Sent you an email. ComplexRational (talk) 20:25, 5 February 2021 (UTC)

Sent it. :) (Though it seems to not consider the 8p states.) Double sharp (talk) 03:42, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

Okay, the articles have been done. Now I guess we have to collect all the variants for Extended periodic table. Double sharp (talk) 04:15, 15 February 2021 (UTC)

Hopefully better now, with all the variants. In a few cases, for consistency I assumed a bare "8p" meant "8p_1/2". Double sharp (talk) 09:45, 18 February 2021 (UTC)

@Double sharp: Looking good, and yes, your assumption seems correct. Would it be possible, though, to cite each predicted configuration inline so it's clear exactly who predicts what? I think that might be clearer to readers (or perhaps future GA/PR/FA reviewers) than 6–7 sources in the table header, and if presentability is a concern, we could add a separate "ref" column on the right. ComplexRational (talk) 13:40, 18 February 2021 (UTC)

It's probably better, yes. But maybe a bit later, I'm a bit busy. XD Double sharp (talk) 13:48, 18 February 2021 (UTC)

I could even work on it in a few hours, when I'm (temporarily) a bit less busy. But no hurry either way. ComplexRational (talk) 14:24, 18 February 2021 (UTC)

Do you have access to this? (If you don't, I have it also.) It's quite an interesting old speculation on elements 164 and 184. Double sharp (talk) 03:54, 19 February 2021 (UTC)

I'm in despair! The saga of validating superheavies has left me in despair!

From IUPAP meeting minutes:

(For background understanding: this Nature article should explain it, as should Cecilia Jarlskog's original conference presentation.) Double sharp (talk) 14:26, 19 February 2021 (UTC)