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List of Radioactive Elements

List of Radioactive Elements has been nominated for deletion. 76.66.201.179 (talk) 04:53, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

It was changed to a redirect on March 14, 2009 as a result of Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/List of Radioactive Elements. JRSpriggs (talk) 13:29, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

Article alerts

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If you are already subscribed to Article Alerts, it is now easier to report bugs and request new features. We are also in the process of implementing a "news system", which would let projects know about ongoing discussions on a wikipedia-wide level, and other things of interest. The developers also note that some subscribing WikiProjects and Taskforces use the display=none parameter, but forget to give a link to their alert page. Your alert page should be located at "Misplaced Pages:PROJECT-OR-TASKFORCE-HOMEPAGE/Article alerts". Questions and feedback should be left at Misplaced Pages talk:Article alerts.

Message sent by User:Addbot to all active wiki projects per request, Comments on the message and bot are welcome here.

Thanks. — Headbomb {_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 09:33, 15 March, 2009 (UTC)

Use of side boxes for physics articles

What is the best way to include lists of boring but relatively important and encyclopedic knowledge within the larger prose of an article. In magnetic field, there is a section entitled 'Alternative names for B and H' that annoys me because it interrupts the flow of the article, yet is important enough to keep. What I would love to do is shove it into a side box out of the main flow. I am worried though about creep of editor laziness on my part. (I already shove too many things I don't what to do with into the references.) Is there any policy banning the use of side boxes and/or general guidance about what to do in these situations? TStein (talk) 19:57, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

Organizing Fermi level / chemical potential-related articles

This was a discussion at Talk:Fermi level, but it may be of wider interest. There are strong overlaps and inconsistencies among the articles Chemical potential, Electrochemical potential, Fermi level, and Fermi energy. (Plus a few related related ones, like work function, electron affinity, etc.) Part of the problem is that no one can agree on definitions. Here's my take...

As part of this, I would propose reducing the electrochemical potential article down to a short discussion of terminology and a link to the chemical potential article, which already covers the exact same concept.

What do people think? Any suggestions or criticisms or better ideas?

In particular, any better ideas for article titles? For example, Fermi level was recently created as article about the first line, but Headbomb changed it to be an article about the third line, because the solid-state physics terminology (third column) tells him that the term "Fermi level" means the concept in the third line. We don't want things like this to happen...we want article titles where everyone can agree what the article should be about. --Steve (talk) 03:12, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

Just as some input, the concepts of Fermi level and Fermi energy are not unique to just electrons but in principle apply to any fermion gas. (For example, a crude model of a neutron star can be made by assuming that it can be treated as a fermion gas.) It is very clear what is meant by fermi level and fermi energy in this context, and this matches the definition given in the lead of Fermi level (if you think fermion for electron). This is, what I would expect to be treated in the fermi level article. But I concede, that this might be a personal preference due to my background in theoretical physics. (TimothyRias (talk) 08:11, 7 April 2009 (UTC))

Combinatorial physics

I was not familiar with the term, MathSciNet gave only 3 hits and no clear definition, ditto for the references supplied. It appears to be a catchy neologism only used by a narrow group of people. Possible WP:Fringe violation. Arcfrk (talk) 22:10, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

Article now renamed as combinatorics and physics. Charvest (talk) 05:34, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

Reassessment request for Transmission electron microscopy

This page has been improved by several editors (>100 edits), with some new diagrams, sections and references, but is still listed as "C" class Class C Revision -- can someone who is more familiar with the requirements review this? Thanks. It has a few "fact" tags still though... User A1 (talk) 03:34, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

In need of someone who speaks Russian at Institute of Radio Engineering and Electronics

I'm trying to copy edit this, but I don't speak Russian so I can't format the references give, or tell if the two entries saying that the IREaE is responsible for the "first radar mapping" of Venus are duplicates of each other, etc... Thanks.Headbomb {_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 05:48, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

• The format of the reference is the same as that used in Russian Misplaced Pages, so I've left the Russian and added a translation. The first two bullet points are referring to different sets of observations, as the reference I've added makes clear (unfortunately, it's also in Russian! but it has some pretty pictures!): the early radar observations of Venus apparently came from the Venera 4 probe. Physchim62 (talk) 08:30, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

• Thanks. Could you give a translation of the Russian title (placed in brackets) and a transliteration of the author's name for the first ref (unless there's a reason not to, of course). It's very hard to parse the Cyrillic alphabet or to get an idea about what it's about. Something like "J.F. Rodionova, Карты Венеры ." (Well, according to Babelfish at least).Headbomb {_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 08:54, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

New taskforces.

I've been considering creating three new taskforces while.

• Biography taskforce: For articles about physicists.
• Publications: For articles dealing with publications, books, etc...
• High-energy/particle physics: For articles dealing with accelerators, lab facilities, theory, experimentation, etc... and anything related to high energy/particle/nuclear physics.

What do you all think?Headbomb {_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 06:25, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

Having the biographies and publications in a seperate taskforce seems like a good idea to me. Developing these articles requires a very different approach from many of our other articles, so it would probably be useful to have access to them through a taskforce. I'm not so convinced about a HEP/PP taskforce, this is such an integral part of modern physics that it would be kind of hard to pick it apart from the rest of physics, nor do the articles really need seperate attention.

As somewhat relevant remark, I would like to note that the WPBannerMeta template used for the physics banner only supports 5 taskforces. So, any more than that would result in a lot of work for use. Nevermind that, it seems there exists a hook to add 10 more taskforces. (TimothyRias (talk) 08:34, 15 April 2009 (UTC))

My first instinct is that we should not create a task force unless there is demand for one and/or someone ready and willing to lead one. The concept of 'build it and they will come' does not seem to apply that well to wikipedia. On the other hand, if the creation of task forces (prior to a demand) has helped in the past or if there is reason to expect that it will now then go for it. If you want to add task forces there are other areas that could use some help as well. Personally, I think the greatest needs in our community are recruiting more leaders, peer reviews, and image editing. TStein (talk) 13:55, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

I don't think creating the task forces will effect the activity in those areas very much. The main thing is that it will make organizing the articles a little easier. For example, it will be easier to find all physics biographies that need assesment. (TimothyRias (talk) 14:00, 15 April 2009 (UTC))

I am all in favor of having a page dedicated to these tasks. But does having a task force for these categories help or hurt? Has it helped or hurt in the past? I don't know. Would it help with cooperation with other biographical projects or other publications projects? Further shouldn't we consider merging both the biography and the publication task forces together as they are closely related and need similar skills and interests.

A biography task force would probably be best dealt with by the people in the biography project, and they could probably adjust their banner to accomodate it. Regarding the other ones, and additional task forces in general, I'm right now one of the coordinators of the Christianity project, and we're in the process of maybe trying to see if we can use navigation boxes in lieu of additional task forces for various relevant areas. If the members of your project can agree which articles/topics are of "Top" importance in a particular field, they could easily be placed in the primary navbox. Other articles, "High" for instance, will generally be more numerous and could be joined by other navboxes. Anyway, it's still even in the experimental stage over there, and there is at this point no guarantee that it will work, but it's an idea, if you want to consider it. John Carter (talk) 19:57, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

Physics biographers are interested in different things then other biographers. I think it would make sense for us to have our own task force.TStein (talk) 03:05, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

Oh, granted. But it is generally possible to adjust a banner to accomodate assessments for more than one group, including outside groups. I think the Military history project has done so, and I know the Christianity banner does so, because I'm the one who adjusted it to do that. And, the Biography banner is the only one I know of which has the BLP and other biographical factors built in. It would probably be rather difficult to add them all to the Physics banner. And "joint task forces" are already rather common, in some ways. John Carter (talk) 18:51, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

All taskforces have done within the tropical cyclone project were to help track statistics of particular categories more easily. It didn't attract new editors. Thegreatdr (talk) 20:14, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

Man, I am dense! For some reason, I missed the main reason for forming the task force: to add them to the physics rating template. (Or am I being dense still?) Was that information useful for the tropical cyclone project. In other words did it help the editors or was it book keeping for book keeping sake? TStein (talk) 03:05, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

It is nice to see how the progress in the various portions of the project is going. We keep a wikiscore for each section. Thegreatdr (talk) 03:12, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

(unindent) Well my motivation for the bio and pub ones is mainly bookkeeping. It would greatly facilitate bot-work (and human work too) as far as making sure they all have biography banners, listas parameters, etc... It's the area where the physics project lagging behind in terms of assesment, and gets the least ammount of attention. The publication taskforces wouldn't have a whole lot of things in it, true, but these are often articles that need to be treated differently than others, since they are not about physics per say, but about the impact of the publication, etc... It would make it easier to verify that infoboxes, ISBN, doi, etc., are presents. Again this is bookeeping mostly. I doubt we'd recruit much people with those taskforces, but it's not really the point.

The HEP taskforce came to mind as I'm mostly interested in that area of physics, and it seems like a good chunk of members have a HEP background. I'll admit I'm sort of on a "taskforce high" because of the success of the recently revived Fluid Dynamics project and the creation of the Glass taskforce, which is also much more active than I expected. One of my plans for 2009 is the creation of more taskforces like these two. But if people are against the idea, I won't force it down anyone's throat. IMO, at worse it helps bookkeeping, at best it improves the quality of the coverage and help to identify problems and missing content. Dunno what it'll do for recruiting. The best way to increase membership will always remain "manually" inviting people, both on and off wiki. Headbomb {_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 05:22, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

Sounds good to me. I agree about manually inviting people. I had two (unfounded as it turns out) worries about extra task forces. The first was that it would help fracture the physics 'community', if you want to call it that. (The chances are that it won't have an impact either way.) Second there is a maintenance cost associated with the task forces. If it help bots give us better and more useful data, then who could argue with that.

It sounds to me that the publication tasks that you want to use bots for is a lot more general then physics and should have another home. Perhaps, biography? (I am assuming there is not a WP:Publications or something like that.) Any bots can then look for both the physics banner and the biography banner together on the same page.

The high energy task force is a separate issue. I am not against it, but what makes HEP so special that it should be singled out when modern physics, electromagnetism, classical mechanics, solid state, optics, electronics, engineering physics are not? Or are you eventually planning to pick a reasonable set of task forces that spans most of physics? Are we aiming so that every field can have a technical page to go to for technical RFCs and the like while reserving the main physics page for generic RFCs and PR plus community building stuff? Then there is the additional task of maintaining the membership list between the main page and the task forces. (Sounds like bot-fodder to me.) TStein (talk) 14:09, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

There is a second reason for creating new task forces which has been mentioned yet. A task force has its own talk page and "Misplaced Pages identity", so helps to keep discussion on a particular topic together. I'm sure editors who watch this talk page are more than capable of discussing the problems of biographical articles about physicists, but it is helpful (especially for non-project members) to keep those discussions together. The main talk page of a large and active project (such as WP:PHYS) can be a little intimidating for outsiders who wish to discuss a technical point on an article which isn't obviously in the core area: I know that I tread carefully when I visit WT:MILHIST, for example!

A separate identity is also useful when the task-force needs to collaborate with other projects. WP:GLASS is a good example of this: a physics editor can completely ignore it if they so wish, but someone from outside WP:PHYS who wants to collaborate on glass-related articles will know that the editors who do turn up at WT:GLASS are the ones who are actually interested in dealing with glass-related topics!

Based on our experience at WP:CHEMISTRY, I would suggest a single task-force covering biographies, history of physics and publications (BHOP). We don't have one for chemistry, but it is an idea that has been discussed in the past and we do have editors who specifically look after these sorts of articles. In the end, nobody at WP:CHEMISTRY has been bothered to set up a new page, and the editors concerned rarely seem to run into problems which need the help of the rest of the project. Physchim62 (talk) 14:39, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

In theory, it should work out in that manner, where the individual task forces are in essence their own wikiprojects. But it hasn't worked out that way within the TC task forces, with very little discussion happening within those talk pages and very few people actually signing up as editors within the smaller task forces. Thegreatdr (talk) 18:59, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

(to TStein) Like I said, I do plan on setting up more taskforces that would cover a variety of topics over the next year. What these are just yet I don't know yet, but I'm hovering around the same sort of division (EM, Optics, we already have Relativity, Mechanics, ...). There's an interesting suggestion for a combined Bio/Hist/Pub taskforce from Physchim too. Headbomb {_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 18:44, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

If you create a bio/hist/pub task force can that be used to clean up some of the cruft in our lists of articles? Perhaps we can have a bot tag any article with both a physics template and a WPBiography template with this task force. Right now there are way too many articles to try to maintain and a good portion of those are biographies. (An example of this are the 225 start articles of unevaluated importance.) A task force for bio/hist/pub may be a start. The first step to cleaning up a really big mess is often to organize it. TStein (talk) 05:47, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

I actually was looking into the how of this tonight. I think the best way to do this would be to have three parameters in the template (such as |bio= |hist= |pub= ) which would (for categorization purposes) be handled as three different taskforces. But the "homepage" of all three projects would be the same. What do you think? Headbomb {_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 06:21, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

Also we would need to find physicists (and physicists related) categories and subcategories for bot tagging. Headbomb {_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 06:22, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

Centrifugal force subsection revision

A few editors have commented about a bloated subsection in Centrifugal force (rotating reference frame). I've put a proposed revision for this section on the talk page as a simpler, shorter, and more focused summary. The discussion could however use additional voices. Any comments and feedback on the proposed revision would be appreciated. Thanks. --FyzixFighter (talk) 20:49, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

Perpetual motion

Perhaps I'm wrong, but perpetual motion seems to be a rather dubious page. There's some recent discussion on talk:perpetual motion. If any knowledgeable contributors want to comment, it'd be appreciated. WLU (t) (c) Misplaced Pages's rules:/_complex 02:24, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

Nuclear weapons and the scope of this project

Recently various article on nuclear weapons were added to this project. Since I couldn't find any obvious importance of specific bombs like Big Boy to the development of physics (they belong in the realm of engineering, milhist, etc.), so I removed the banners. Clearly not everybody agrees with this since the banners were readded a day later. So, I am putting it up here for discussion to form some form of consensus. So, do nuclear weapons such as Little boy, Big Boy and their tests such as Trinity test, belong within the scope of WP physics? If so, what importance rating should they be given? (TimothyRias (talk) 11:36, 22 April 2009 (UTC))

I agree with you. Nuclear weapons are not physics. At best, the engineering uses some ideas from physics, so it is an application. However, it is true that some big name physicists, e.g. Richard Feynman, worked on nuclear weapons. JRSpriggs (talk) 09:35, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

(Disclaimer: All this is only my opinion, not some declaration of how things actually are.) Well these specific ones would be part of the upcoming history taskforce (see #New taskforces above), and so would all bombs with some kind of historical significance to physics (such as The Gadget). Bomb designs (such as Teller-Ulam design), IMO belong in this project too (although probably not the history taskforce). Specific nuclear weapons tests or weapons such as Chagan (nuclear test) or AN-11 bomb are cleary out of the scope of this project. There's WP:WEAPON for them (and all the other previously mentionned article as well). Headbomb {_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 06:35, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

I don't know what to say. I recently evaluated a number of these and I let some through, iirc, and removed some physics tags as well. Like it or not, physics is associated with the Manhattan project. TStein (talk) 06:10, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

Convective available potential energy / Convective instability

Hello

Two articles (both previously in WikiProject Physics, now one)—Convective instability and Convective available potential energy were merged. Now there is a discussion as to whether it is appropriate to have the merged article recreated to describe the phenomenon in less technical specificity and in a manner appropriate to at least one class of interested readers. If you care, could you please review Talk:Convective instability#Fork?

Thanks, Bongomatic 23:26, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Quark nominated for GA

The quark article is has been nominated as a good article. It would be nice if somebody who hasn't worked on the article could review it. Thanks. (Note that any established user can review GA articles! So, if you'v never done so go for it.) (TimothyRias (talk) 10:38, 24 April 2009 (UTC))

Turbulence

The turbulence article is a mess at the moment, see here. For the time being, I reverted to a version of 8 March, and would very much appreciate help to sort things out. -- Crowsnest (talk) 10:53, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

Jet engine performance

Jet engine performance has been prodded for deletion. 76.66.202.139 (talk) 06:32, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

I removed the ProD. The reason for deletion was essentially that it was badly written. The article met none of the WP:Del that I could see. TStein (talk) 17:41, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Magnetosphere of Jupiter

I nominated this article for peer review. You can leave your comments here. This article may be interesting for the Physics Wikiproject as it contains a lot of physics. Ruslik (talk) 19:49, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

Updating Spectroscopy articles

The research group I'm in is interested in helping update several spectroscopy articles. I want to start by working on X-ray absorption spectroscopy, but before I dive in, I wanted to make sure I wasn't stepping on anyone's toes. The discussion page directed me to this WikiProject.

My plan for XAS is write a good introduction (with pictures!) and divide the types (ie. XAS, XANES, EXAFS) into sections with brief introduction and links to other wiki pages.

Thoughts? Atenderholt (talk) 00:56, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

Go right ahead. Just make sure to respect conflicts of interest guidelines and read suggestions for COI compliance and there shouldn't be any problem. There's a quick help table on this project's main page if you get confused. You could also get WikiProject Chemistry involved if that's not already done. Headbomb {_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 01:17, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

squashed entanglement

Is squashed entanglement a valid topic? I don't know anything about the subject but it looks like it might be a vanity article. 67.122.209.126 (talk) 21:46, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

Hauke Harder

The article about German composer Hauke Harder is currently discussed for deletion. Harder also worked in the field of molecular spectroscopy before becoming a professional artist, lists of his publications can be found here and here. Maybe someone more into science than me can point out his work in one or two sentences, as I think he is certainly notable. Thank you. --Avant-garde a clue-hexaChord 22:03, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

"Statistical mechanics" or "statistical thermodynamics"?

The way that the merge of statistical thermodynamics into statistical mechanics was carried out made the article very unclear. Only one of the terms is actually defined and the article keeps switching between them. I have already posted a comment at Talk:Statistical mechanics#Mechanics or thermodynamics?, but since neither of the talk pages (Talk:Statistical mechanics, Talk:Statistical thermodynamics) has been modified for more than 4 months and the article is marked as Top-importance, I'm posting this here too to try to attract attention. Brian Jason Drake 05:08, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

AfD alert Solid-state ionics

No, I'm not kidding. The justification is that there is an article already on Fast ion conductors so the field of solid state ionics should be redirected to fast ion conductors, because, the latter has a more substantial article. No, I'm not kidding. You know en.wiki has some really great physics articles, many physics editors go out of their way to explain concepts well to the layman, much better than in every other science area on en.wiki as far as I can see, but some major articles are absent or improper stubs, and they readily become the targets of editors who seem to be nominating because the topic obscure to them and therefore must not be important. Both articles are certifiable disasters, by the way, and could use the most basic of help--no research necessary, just the least you know will be more than what is there. I edited a sentence or two, but it's beyond my time right now. Thanks. --KP Botany (talk) 03:19, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Personally, I am in favor of merging and redirecting stubs into very closely related articles, or the article into the stub if the name is better. After reading the two articles--from an outside perspective, though--I don't see what is wrong with merging the two articles until enough is written about one or the other to split it out. If I could figure out what each article was trying to say I would do it myself. (It seems easiest to me to add a fast ion conductor section in solid state ionics then paste the, admittedly disasterous, fast ion conductor article there. Some parts then can be moved up. It wouldn't be terribly much better, but it would have more related information in the same spot and you would not lose any information.)

I agree with you in that it irritates me as well the way some people use a blunt instrument like deletion when the more surgical precision of merging and redirects is needed.TStein (talk) 05:08, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

I would rather see a better article on Solid state ionics written, than do anything with the fast ion conductor article. The former is more important, and the latter could rest comfortably in it until it were better, if there were a usable solid state ionics article, which there isn't. It always surprises me how little effort people who think they are otherwise capable of editing an encyclopedia make to see if something is an important topic when it's something they simply don't understand. It's rampant on en.wiki, not so bad on the European wikis that I have seen--maybe fewer Simpsons's fans?

A merger would be inappropriate, in my opinion, for that very reason, the the way to merge would be to merge the fast ion conductor article into the solid state ionics article, if either way, and the solid state ionics article is in no state to carry its own weight much less that of another article. Both are huge topics, though, with plenty of general and scientific literature for writing the articles.

Because I write mostly taxa articles I'm not afraid of a stub, particularly as a place holder for something major.

But the most refined instrument is to simply post at a wiki project and find people in the know. --KP Botany (talk) 03:16, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

• Project-Class physics pages
• NA-importance physics pages
• Project-Class physics articles of NA-importance