![]() | This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 1 | Archive 2 | Archive 3 | Archive 4 | Archive 5 | → | Archive 8 |
1. Organization. I think the section "proposed future definitions" should directly follow "Stability of the International Prototype Kilogram." Why is "SI multiples" the second section? It seems like essentially a reference guide that readers will go directly to or something that someone might be interested in if they are so interested in the kilogram that they've read the entire article. It doesn't seem like something that most readers are likely to want to read. Everyone already knows that I don’t agree with the inclusion of extensive discussion of “mass v. weight” in this article, but even if it should be here, why are there separate sections entitled “The nature of mass” and “Mass vs. weight”? For the record, I’m mostly happy with the contents of “The nature of mass” although I would incorporate that subject into a larger section. I also think that the information in “Importance of the kilogram” section should go into the stability section. Enuja (talk) 08:03, 9 September 2007 (UTC)
2. Lead section The use of the phrase "deprecated unit" might be confusing to many readers, and I do not understand why whether or not the pound is a measure of mass (and that there is a pound-force) should be in the lead of an article about the kilogram. Also, lead sections should summarize the entire article, and the current lead section leaves much out. I suggest
I’m not sure where the paragraph about the conversion between pounds and kilograms should go. There isn’t any of that in the text of the article, so if we follow Wikipedia:Lead section, it shouldn’t be in the lead. Of course, it needs to be in the article, and I think it probably needs to be in the lead, but as I go through and summarize the article, there isn’t a neat place for it. Any ideas? I’m also not sure if the CIPM’s recommendation in 2005 had anything to do with the instability in the IPK, so I don’t want to put that sentence in the lead until I confirm that. Enuja (talk) 08:03, 9 September 2007 (UTC)
3. Citations This article has a lot of new (correct! yeah!) information in it, but much of that information is lacking inline citations. The “Importance of the Kilogram” and lead sections, for example, currently have no inline citations. This should really be high on all of our to-do lists for this article. Unfortunately, I do not possess any good references for physics at all, but hopefully I'll be able to use any online-accessible references that Greg L has provided and put them in additional places that they need to be. Enuja (talk) 08:03, 9 September 2007 (UTC)
Notes: I am suggesting changes here instead of simply editing the article because I am aware that there is not currently a unanimous consensus about the scope of this article. Until we come to a consensus, I will make any suggestions on the talk page before editing the article. I do not mean to make other people do the actual editing for me; I am more than willing to edit once there is agreement on this talk page about phrasing or organization. I am very willing to do collaborative copy editing on the live article page, but I’d at least like to know that other editors agree with my general direction of editing before I change the article. Also, I have split my comments into numbered sections, so I would appreciate that any response to my comments goes between the sections or after this response as a whole, so I can follow the conversation more clearly. Enuja (talk) 08:03, 9 September 2007 (UTC)
There is nothing really wrong with replacing the link to a redirect ( SI), but I used the redirect in hopes of keeping the page source simpler and easier to read. See WP:REDIRECT#Do_not_change_links_to_redirects_that_are_not_broken for future reference. Enuja (talk) 19:18, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
The sentence "While the weight of objects are often given in kilograms, the kilogram is, in the strict scientific sense, a unit of mass" should be changed to reflect that the intention is to determine the mass, but the only scale available measures the weight instead. In other words, if I am on the space station and I request a kilogram of flour be sent up, I certainly do not want a kilogram-force in my microgravity, which would be many tonnes. So it isn't the weight that is being given in kilograms, it is that weighing is used to measure the mass, with an appropriate conversion for gravity. I have no suggestion for a better wording. 199.125.109.105 00:07, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
How about the wording "Although the mass of objects in kilograms is often described as a weight, the kilogram is, in the strict scientific sense, a unit of mass"? Because, however widely it is used, and however historically legitimate it is to say that I weigh 117 pounds, it is confusing and this, as an encyclopedia, should direct readers to understanding the difference between weight and mass. Enuja (talk) 20:44, 2 October 2007 (UTC)
Please do not use comments to have a discussion between editors. I removed the following comments from the image on the article page. Please continue your discussion here. Enuja (talk) 02:36, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
To quote Rhett Butler from Gone with the Wind, I think you should make the article look any way you want it to look and should not pay attention to what I say. Isn't that what he said? There are close to a billion people in the world that have web access and a scant few of them are on broadband. I design things for the school kid in Nairobi who uses a ten year old computer and a 1200 baud modem. The sunspot article looks best when the image is resized to 200px, even with the paragraph of text for the caption, and you can still see the words, "relative size of earth", but I can only read them because I know what they are. One of the biggest problem with "web development" and software development in general is that the developers test and develop things on the latest greatest fastest computers and then the rest of us have to struggle with trying to use it on ancient hardware. The text I see to the left of the photo of the kilogram now is the sum total of the following: "“Kg” redirects here. For other uses, see Kg." And there is a huge whitespace beside the TOC, but it is much smaller than in most articles because the topics are so long.
By the way you can ditch the "to so and so" because it is better to address the issue than the author. 199.125.109.35 06:07, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
…if I see images larger than 250px or 300px I resize them.
I would much rather have it 180px
Since I am on dialup having to wait for a 359px image to render is like forever.
Normally as I click through random articles if I see images larger than 250px or 300px I resize them.
I've forgotten all about it. However, if you were going to make 20 images I would have preferred it if you had made them from 280 to 300 px. 21 images, I mean. I moved the image back where it was below the redirect notice where it belongs. 199.125.109.47 04:22, 23 September 2007 (UTC)
Vinyanov: Regarding these edits, according to the general principals outlined in WP: What needs to be done on pages that are targets of redirects? and WP: Principle of least astonishment, the reader should be able to best anticipate what will happen when they click on a link. Examine the below examples; the last link in both skips the page forward to the same section in the Kilogram article:
While the weight of matter is entirely dependent upon the strength of gravity, the mass of matter is constant (assuming it is not traveling at a relativistic speed with respect to an observer). Accordingly, for astronauts in microgravity, no effort is required to hold an object off the cabin floor since such objects naturally hover. However, since objects in microgravity still retain their mass, an astronaut must exert one hundred times more effort to accelerate a 100-kilogram object at the same rate as for a 1-kilogram object. See also Mass vs. weight below.
Note that by using the above method, the reader properly knows precisely what will happen if they click on the Mass vs. weight link; they will skip forward to a section of that same article where they can read a passage that expands on that particular subject. Contrast this with the following technique for accomplishing this simple task:
While the weight of matter is entirely dependent upon the strength of gravity, the mass of matter is constant (assuming it is not traveling at a relativistic speed with respect to an observer). Accordingly, for astronauts in microgravity, no effort is required to hold an object off the cabin floor since such objects naturally hover. However, since objects in microgravity still retain their mass, an astronaut must exert one hundred times more effort to accelerate a 100-kilogram object at the same rate as for a 1-kilogram object.
Note that in both examples, the reader could reasonably and correctly anticipate what will happen if they click on the “weight” and “relativistic” links: they will be taken to the relevant Wikipedia article. These two links are properly made and carry no surprises. The third link (“ one hundred times”) in the latter method does not provide the reader with sufficient information in to properly anticipate what they will be taken to if they click on it. This latter style of linking has an “Easter egg hunt” quality and almost begs to be clicked on just to find out what a “one hundred times”-link could possibly take the reader to: (elsewhere in the current article(?), at article about “ one hundred”(?) who knows?). Sometimes very obscurely aliased links may be suitable for special purposes, like humor. As a general rule, the Principal of Least Astonishment makes articles more enjoyable to read and encourages interaction and exploration (learning) because the reader knows they won’t be wasting their time by clicking on mysterious links of no interest to them, which is not a good way to make links. :-)
Greg L ( my talk) 21:32, 19 September 2007 (UTC)
Ruakh: The superscripted and subscripted non-breaking spaces serve an important function. Take a look at the space between the ‘General section’ footnote and the ‘Report to the CGPM’ footnote here. The line with the superscripted “108” adds as much leading to its last line as an entire note break following it. Your eye has to scan back to the num^ to see where a note ends and a new one starts. So I add more space with code between notes like these. Anywhere where footnotes or superscripted exponents give the first or last lines in paragraphs extra leading, I separate that paragraph to the next one with a bit more leading with this technique. It makes it much more readable that way. Greg L ( my talk) 04:20, 23 September 2007 (UTC)
I've reverted the table back to its Wiki table form. That is, after all, what Wiki table syntax is for: creating tables. Whereas templates are nice tool to have (thank you for creating the template) when creating new articles or brand new tables, they can not serve every need for every article. The main disadvantage of templates is that templates can be deleted at a later date and this would delete the table, would it not? Attempts to do precisely this—delete a table-generating template—have been attempted in the recent past after certain users objected to the very existence of SI tables. Further, notwithstanding the truism about how “beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” the original table looks better than the template-generated one. Greg L ( my talk) 22:19, 27 September 2007 (UTC)
I'm most concerned at the odd use of HTML and emphasis in the article. I see that this has been fixed, and hope that it won't return to its previous state. Tony (talk) 05:43, 28 September 2007 (UTC)
In the watt balance, Planck's constant would be fixed, where h = 6.62606896 × 10–34 J s (from the 2006 CODATA value for Planck's constant of 6.62606896(33) × 10–34 J s) and the kilogram would be defined as the mass of a body at rest whose equivalent energy equals the energy of photons whose frequencies sum to 1.356392733 × 1050 Hz. [1]
The virtue of kilogram standards wherein their practical…
P.S. I don't have any idea whose markup I fixed ( difference shown here) but could see that the markup looked like it should have created a new paragraph but the end result was that there wasn't a new paragraph (at least on my iMac). Maybe it was a temporary thing with Wikipedia’s server; I don’t know, but here’s the original run-on paragraph before the fix. Even showing the historical version displays the problem. Whatever technique is used here should also avoid that problem too. Greg L ( my talk) 20:29, 28 September 2007 (UTC)
I hope there isn’t going to be a fight over this; there shouldn’t be. Somewhere in all of this work in settling on syntax and formating and markup and whatever, values like 6.626 068 96 × 10–34 J s got turned into barbaric strings like 6.62606896 × 10–34 J s. Long strings of digits like this are really hard to parse. The SI delimits digits to the right of the decimal point with spaces and so too does the NIST. Where possible according to SI writing style, this is done with narrow spaces, as is disclosed (and demonstrated) in the sixth, left-justified bullet item in SI: SI writing style. Greg L ( my talk) 04:01, 29 September 2007 (UTC)
Hankwang: It looks like you’ve done a lot of good, hard work on your template. I am truly impressed. Ruakh: That’s the combined hits on both. To all: I've had royal battles on the picture size with someone who has a 640 × 480 screen. You have to consider appearance for a range of monitor resolutions. Most Web work assumes a minimum screen size of 800 × 600 but that won't assuage the “640 × 480 crowd.” I use a 1440-pixel-wide monitor myself and usually have my browser window set to a width of 1070 pixels. As the SI table layout was set a few minutes ago, it didn’t look good on either small or big resolutions. On 640 × 480 monitor, the text to the left was way too crowded. At 1070 pixels, the table ran off the bottom of the section and encroached into the next section. White space isn't bad. It's a well-used technique in page layout to make presentations look friendly and gives the eye a rest. Greg L ( my talk) 15:55, 29 September 2007 (UTC)
P.S.: Hankwang, the kilogram is unique among the SI units in that there are no other prefixed versions of it. If you want to prefix mass units, you prefix the gram. This of course, is explained in the text. But it would be nice if you would add a 100 entry showing just the word “gram”. This helps highlight the concept that, unlike all other units, one abandons the kilogram and instead uses the gram.
Greg L (
my talk) 16:03, 29 September 2007 (UTC)
Greg L (
my talk)
23:11, 29 September 2007 (UTC)
According to Wikipedia:Footnotes, Resizing references: “Some editors prefer references to be in a smaller font size than the text in the body of the article.” There is no “preferred” method of doing this—even for expansive lists of notes.
The above-quoted text discloses a good rational why reduced-size text sometimes makes good sense. Sometimes the “Notes”, or “References” sections are nothing but long lists of citations, such the references section for Psycho (1960 film). In citation-only References sections like this, all you get is a highlighted citation when you click on a footnote. Small text is adequate for this purpose. In other cases, like the Kilogram article, the notes section is truly a Notes section, where points are sometimes expand on (in addition to providing citations). Especially on some computer systems with high-res monitors, reduced-size text is too small for comfort so normal-size text in situations like this is the better option. Greg L ( my talk) 19:17, 30 September 2007 (UTC)
One mole of C-12 is already defined as being precisely 12 grams. The Australian NMI only states the obvious: how the kilogram could be defined as 1000/12 x Avogadro constant. They mention this in order to illustrate the concept of how the Avogadro constant should be used to define the kilogram in terms of silicon. The NMI Web site does not propose to fix the Avogadro constant, quite the opposite; they actually mention the 0.01 ppm uncertainty of the Avogadro constant. It isn’t proper to cite references that don't really support the statement.
I didn't place this “C-12” section here; I've only edited it. It would be nice if you could find a citable reference to someone who proposes to fix Avogadro's constant and define the kilogram in relationship to C-12 (besides the Georgia Tech professor, who really isn't part of the regular “kilogram” group of physicists). But at least this reference speaks directly to the subject of fixing the Avogadro constant at some value and defining the kilogram in terms of C-12. Greg L ( my talk) 01:38, 2 October 2007 (UTC)
So far, I've been editing text in the Kilogram article for accuracy without questioning any of the information's fundamental validity. I went in search of a citable reference to support the “Electron mass” section and could find nothing. After reading what I could about electron mass, the watt balance, and how all this ties to the kilogram, I deleted the section titled “Electron mass” after concluding that there likely (it is impossible to prove a negative) has been no reputable proposal to define the kilogram in terms of electron mass. It appears that either a Wikipedia contributor misinterpreted an NIST press release regarding the watt balance, or read an amateur-level science Web page, or someone misinterpreted Towards an electronic kilogram: an improved measurement of the Planck constant and electron mass, Metrologia 42, 431–441 (a paper often cited in articles on the watt balance). One of the byproducts of fixing the Planck constant (as would occur with the watt balance) is that the uncertainty in the electron mass would be reduced by a factor of ten. If the Avogadro constant NA is fixed (as has been proposed in atom-counting approaches) then electron mass would be precisely fixed (Redefinition of the kilogram: a decision whose time has come, Metrologia 42, 71–80) . But again, this would by a byproduct of an entirely different approach to defining the kilogram. I can find no source suggesting that the kilogram should be defined in terms of electron mass. Greg L ( my talk) 15:51, 2 October 2007 (UTC)
The Micro-g LaCoste Web site does not display properly on some computer systems and will be highly misleading. Some readers may explore the FG-5 further by hand-editing the URL after clicking on the provided link in the Links to photographs section. Notwithstanding what their Web site shows, the accuracy is not 2 mGal and is indeed 2 µGal as written in the Kilogram article.
Proof? If you read their Web site further you will find spelled-out accuracies quoting “microgal”. If you view the Micro-g LaCoste Web site using Internet Explorer, you should see the Greek “μ” character. If go to their Web page here, and View>Source, you will see that their accuracy value is coded in HTML as Accuracy: 2<font face="symbol">m</font>Gal. This explains why their Web site doesn't display correctly on some systems: it’s an old Web page that calls on Adobe’s Symbol font for the Greek character mu. According to HTML version 4.0, the proper way to encode Greek symbols is to use Unicode because all proper Unicode fonts include the Greek characters; one is not supposed to assume that Adobe’s Symbol font is installed. Unicode μ produces the Greek “mu” symbol (“μ”) and Unicode µ produces the special “micro” symbol (“µ”). With Adobe’s “Symbol” font, the μ character is “typed” with a lowercase “m”. If the Symbol font isn’t installed or isn’t supported by your system or browser, you see “mGal”, not the semi-proper “μGal”, and certainly not the Unicode-generated, perfectly proper “µGal”. Note too that while writing this article, a physicist at the NIST who is using and FG-5 confirmed to me that it has 2 µGal accuracy. His browser also shows “2 µGal” when he visits the Micro-g LaCoste Web site.
For Mac OS X users confused about this: Yes, your Symbol font is really installed. But Apple’s OS X and its apps don’t support it; at least not in 10.3. As a matter of fact, it’s more than an issue of “not supporting” the font, it appears Apple purposelessly blocked the font—probably at the system level—in order to enforce rigor and discipline among the developer community. The Mac OS since at least System 7.5.5 (probably before) can generate Greek characters using any font; Mac OS X supports Unicode system-wide. For instance, you type option-m to obtain µ and option-j to obtain ∆. Typing “∆ 50 µV” has been a trivial effort for a long time on a Mac. It appears that Steve Jobs went out of his way to make a point that Greek characters should be properly called using only one method. If you’re running 10.3.x and aren’t fully convinced, try this: open Font Book. Choose Preview>Custom. Choose Times and in the preview pane, replace everything with m. Now select some other fonts; all you get is m in different faces. Then try Symbol. Where’d all that text come from? As you can see, Font Book gives Symbol very special treatment indeed. Try this too: go to Apple’s Mail and try to use Symbol. Then try MS Word. One can see that any app that uses Apple’s system-wide font-choosing resource can’t make use of Symbol and any app that calls fonts its own way (MS Word) can make use of it. It appears that Apple blocked Symbol at the system level so Font Book has to synthesize the Greek characters by pulling them from Times. More troublesome is Safari can’t even access Symbol when asked to. This bugs me but I learned something anyway. I never would have found this out if it weren’t for two things: 1) the Micro-g LaCoste Web site, and 2) my old practice of using Symbol for the proper foot-length and minute-of-angle symbol ( ′ ) and the proper inch-length and second-of-angle symbol ( ″ ) (vs. the barbarian method, used even in some so-called “professionally produced” brochures, of using the straight-quotes " and ' ).
Anyway, I didn’t want to get into a debate on the virtues of operating systems. I provided this paragraph for the benefit of OS X users who can have a real WTF!?! reaction to the observed behavior of the Symbol font on their computers. But my primary objective is to ensure that the Kilogram article continues to show “2 µGal” even though many logical and smart people can see authoritative, clear, and convincing evidence otherwise.
Greg L ( my talk) 10:03, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
I am concerned about revisions, both on this page and on the main page, between User:Greg L, 207.190.198.130 and User:Swatjester. There appears to be a very strong difference of opinion between Greg L and Swatjester, but does this disagreement does not make either person's actions vandalism. All three users have, in edit summaries, tagged edits by the other user as vandalism. This is not okay.
Personally, I do not think using the image of the watt balance on this page is appropriate under free use restrictions, but I can easily see how this is a matter of interpretation. How much does the image actually contribute? Is the kilogram substantially equal to one possible future way of defining it? My answers are "not much, because it's just a complicated looking contraption and a face seen with a fish-eye lens" and "the two are very different" but having different answers to those questions does not make a user a vandal.
Swatjester, please stop calling Greg L's copy and paste of your comments vandalism. Greg L, and 207.190.198.130, please do not continue to add to this page posts that User:Swatjester made on User_talk:Swatjester. Enuja (talk) 00:26, 17 October 2007 (UTC)
![]() | This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 1 | Archive 2 | Archive 3 | Archive 4 | Archive 5 | → | Archive 8 |
1. Organization. I think the section "proposed future definitions" should directly follow "Stability of the International Prototype Kilogram." Why is "SI multiples" the second section? It seems like essentially a reference guide that readers will go directly to or something that someone might be interested in if they are so interested in the kilogram that they've read the entire article. It doesn't seem like something that most readers are likely to want to read. Everyone already knows that I don’t agree with the inclusion of extensive discussion of “mass v. weight” in this article, but even if it should be here, why are there separate sections entitled “The nature of mass” and “Mass vs. weight”? For the record, I’m mostly happy with the contents of “The nature of mass” although I would incorporate that subject into a larger section. I also think that the information in “Importance of the kilogram” section should go into the stability section. Enuja (talk) 08:03, 9 September 2007 (UTC)
2. Lead section The use of the phrase "deprecated unit" might be confusing to many readers, and I do not understand why whether or not the pound is a measure of mass (and that there is a pound-force) should be in the lead of an article about the kilogram. Also, lead sections should summarize the entire article, and the current lead section leaves much out. I suggest
I’m not sure where the paragraph about the conversion between pounds and kilograms should go. There isn’t any of that in the text of the article, so if we follow Wikipedia:Lead section, it shouldn’t be in the lead. Of course, it needs to be in the article, and I think it probably needs to be in the lead, but as I go through and summarize the article, there isn’t a neat place for it. Any ideas? I’m also not sure if the CIPM’s recommendation in 2005 had anything to do with the instability in the IPK, so I don’t want to put that sentence in the lead until I confirm that. Enuja (talk) 08:03, 9 September 2007 (UTC)
3. Citations This article has a lot of new (correct! yeah!) information in it, but much of that information is lacking inline citations. The “Importance of the Kilogram” and lead sections, for example, currently have no inline citations. This should really be high on all of our to-do lists for this article. Unfortunately, I do not possess any good references for physics at all, but hopefully I'll be able to use any online-accessible references that Greg L has provided and put them in additional places that they need to be. Enuja (talk) 08:03, 9 September 2007 (UTC)
Notes: I am suggesting changes here instead of simply editing the article because I am aware that there is not currently a unanimous consensus about the scope of this article. Until we come to a consensus, I will make any suggestions on the talk page before editing the article. I do not mean to make other people do the actual editing for me; I am more than willing to edit once there is agreement on this talk page about phrasing or organization. I am very willing to do collaborative copy editing on the live article page, but I’d at least like to know that other editors agree with my general direction of editing before I change the article. Also, I have split my comments into numbered sections, so I would appreciate that any response to my comments goes between the sections or after this response as a whole, so I can follow the conversation more clearly. Enuja (talk) 08:03, 9 September 2007 (UTC)
There is nothing really wrong with replacing the link to a redirect ( SI), but I used the redirect in hopes of keeping the page source simpler and easier to read. See WP:REDIRECT#Do_not_change_links_to_redirects_that_are_not_broken for future reference. Enuja (talk) 19:18, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
The sentence "While the weight of objects are often given in kilograms, the kilogram is, in the strict scientific sense, a unit of mass" should be changed to reflect that the intention is to determine the mass, but the only scale available measures the weight instead. In other words, if I am on the space station and I request a kilogram of flour be sent up, I certainly do not want a kilogram-force in my microgravity, which would be many tonnes. So it isn't the weight that is being given in kilograms, it is that weighing is used to measure the mass, with an appropriate conversion for gravity. I have no suggestion for a better wording. 199.125.109.105 00:07, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
How about the wording "Although the mass of objects in kilograms is often described as a weight, the kilogram is, in the strict scientific sense, a unit of mass"? Because, however widely it is used, and however historically legitimate it is to say that I weigh 117 pounds, it is confusing and this, as an encyclopedia, should direct readers to understanding the difference between weight and mass. Enuja (talk) 20:44, 2 October 2007 (UTC)
Please do not use comments to have a discussion between editors. I removed the following comments from the image on the article page. Please continue your discussion here. Enuja (talk) 02:36, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
To quote Rhett Butler from Gone with the Wind, I think you should make the article look any way you want it to look and should not pay attention to what I say. Isn't that what he said? There are close to a billion people in the world that have web access and a scant few of them are on broadband. I design things for the school kid in Nairobi who uses a ten year old computer and a 1200 baud modem. The sunspot article looks best when the image is resized to 200px, even with the paragraph of text for the caption, and you can still see the words, "relative size of earth", but I can only read them because I know what they are. One of the biggest problem with "web development" and software development in general is that the developers test and develop things on the latest greatest fastest computers and then the rest of us have to struggle with trying to use it on ancient hardware. The text I see to the left of the photo of the kilogram now is the sum total of the following: "“Kg” redirects here. For other uses, see Kg." And there is a huge whitespace beside the TOC, but it is much smaller than in most articles because the topics are so long.
By the way you can ditch the "to so and so" because it is better to address the issue than the author. 199.125.109.35 06:07, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
…if I see images larger than 250px or 300px I resize them.
I would much rather have it 180px
Since I am on dialup having to wait for a 359px image to render is like forever.
Normally as I click through random articles if I see images larger than 250px or 300px I resize them.
I've forgotten all about it. However, if you were going to make 20 images I would have preferred it if you had made them from 280 to 300 px. 21 images, I mean. I moved the image back where it was below the redirect notice where it belongs. 199.125.109.47 04:22, 23 September 2007 (UTC)
Vinyanov: Regarding these edits, according to the general principals outlined in WP: What needs to be done on pages that are targets of redirects? and WP: Principle of least astonishment, the reader should be able to best anticipate what will happen when they click on a link. Examine the below examples; the last link in both skips the page forward to the same section in the Kilogram article:
While the weight of matter is entirely dependent upon the strength of gravity, the mass of matter is constant (assuming it is not traveling at a relativistic speed with respect to an observer). Accordingly, for astronauts in microgravity, no effort is required to hold an object off the cabin floor since such objects naturally hover. However, since objects in microgravity still retain their mass, an astronaut must exert one hundred times more effort to accelerate a 100-kilogram object at the same rate as for a 1-kilogram object. See also Mass vs. weight below.
Note that by using the above method, the reader properly knows precisely what will happen if they click on the Mass vs. weight link; they will skip forward to a section of that same article where they can read a passage that expands on that particular subject. Contrast this with the following technique for accomplishing this simple task:
While the weight of matter is entirely dependent upon the strength of gravity, the mass of matter is constant (assuming it is not traveling at a relativistic speed with respect to an observer). Accordingly, for astronauts in microgravity, no effort is required to hold an object off the cabin floor since such objects naturally hover. However, since objects in microgravity still retain their mass, an astronaut must exert one hundred times more effort to accelerate a 100-kilogram object at the same rate as for a 1-kilogram object.
Note that in both examples, the reader could reasonably and correctly anticipate what will happen if they click on the “weight” and “relativistic” links: they will be taken to the relevant Wikipedia article. These two links are properly made and carry no surprises. The third link (“ one hundred times”) in the latter method does not provide the reader with sufficient information in to properly anticipate what they will be taken to if they click on it. This latter style of linking has an “Easter egg hunt” quality and almost begs to be clicked on just to find out what a “one hundred times”-link could possibly take the reader to: (elsewhere in the current article(?), at article about “ one hundred”(?) who knows?). Sometimes very obscurely aliased links may be suitable for special purposes, like humor. As a general rule, the Principal of Least Astonishment makes articles more enjoyable to read and encourages interaction and exploration (learning) because the reader knows they won’t be wasting their time by clicking on mysterious links of no interest to them, which is not a good way to make links. :-)
Greg L ( my talk) 21:32, 19 September 2007 (UTC)
Ruakh: The superscripted and subscripted non-breaking spaces serve an important function. Take a look at the space between the ‘General section’ footnote and the ‘Report to the CGPM’ footnote here. The line with the superscripted “108” adds as much leading to its last line as an entire note break following it. Your eye has to scan back to the num^ to see where a note ends and a new one starts. So I add more space with code between notes like these. Anywhere where footnotes or superscripted exponents give the first or last lines in paragraphs extra leading, I separate that paragraph to the next one with a bit more leading with this technique. It makes it much more readable that way. Greg L ( my talk) 04:20, 23 September 2007 (UTC)
I've reverted the table back to its Wiki table form. That is, after all, what Wiki table syntax is for: creating tables. Whereas templates are nice tool to have (thank you for creating the template) when creating new articles or brand new tables, they can not serve every need for every article. The main disadvantage of templates is that templates can be deleted at a later date and this would delete the table, would it not? Attempts to do precisely this—delete a table-generating template—have been attempted in the recent past after certain users objected to the very existence of SI tables. Further, notwithstanding the truism about how “beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” the original table looks better than the template-generated one. Greg L ( my talk) 22:19, 27 September 2007 (UTC)
I'm most concerned at the odd use of HTML and emphasis in the article. I see that this has been fixed, and hope that it won't return to its previous state. Tony (talk) 05:43, 28 September 2007 (UTC)
In the watt balance, Planck's constant would be fixed, where h = 6.62606896 × 10–34 J s (from the 2006 CODATA value for Planck's constant of 6.62606896(33) × 10–34 J s) and the kilogram would be defined as the mass of a body at rest whose equivalent energy equals the energy of photons whose frequencies sum to 1.356392733 × 1050 Hz. [1]
The virtue of kilogram standards wherein their practical…
P.S. I don't have any idea whose markup I fixed ( difference shown here) but could see that the markup looked like it should have created a new paragraph but the end result was that there wasn't a new paragraph (at least on my iMac). Maybe it was a temporary thing with Wikipedia’s server; I don’t know, but here’s the original run-on paragraph before the fix. Even showing the historical version displays the problem. Whatever technique is used here should also avoid that problem too. Greg L ( my talk) 20:29, 28 September 2007 (UTC)
I hope there isn’t going to be a fight over this; there shouldn’t be. Somewhere in all of this work in settling on syntax and formating and markup and whatever, values like 6.626 068 96 × 10–34 J s got turned into barbaric strings like 6.62606896 × 10–34 J s. Long strings of digits like this are really hard to parse. The SI delimits digits to the right of the decimal point with spaces and so too does the NIST. Where possible according to SI writing style, this is done with narrow spaces, as is disclosed (and demonstrated) in the sixth, left-justified bullet item in SI: SI writing style. Greg L ( my talk) 04:01, 29 September 2007 (UTC)
Hankwang: It looks like you’ve done a lot of good, hard work on your template. I am truly impressed. Ruakh: That’s the combined hits on both. To all: I've had royal battles on the picture size with someone who has a 640 × 480 screen. You have to consider appearance for a range of monitor resolutions. Most Web work assumes a minimum screen size of 800 × 600 but that won't assuage the “640 × 480 crowd.” I use a 1440-pixel-wide monitor myself and usually have my browser window set to a width of 1070 pixels. As the SI table layout was set a few minutes ago, it didn’t look good on either small or big resolutions. On 640 × 480 monitor, the text to the left was way too crowded. At 1070 pixels, the table ran off the bottom of the section and encroached into the next section. White space isn't bad. It's a well-used technique in page layout to make presentations look friendly and gives the eye a rest. Greg L ( my talk) 15:55, 29 September 2007 (UTC)
P.S.: Hankwang, the kilogram is unique among the SI units in that there are no other prefixed versions of it. If you want to prefix mass units, you prefix the gram. This of course, is explained in the text. But it would be nice if you would add a 100 entry showing just the word “gram”. This helps highlight the concept that, unlike all other units, one abandons the kilogram and instead uses the gram.
Greg L (
my talk) 16:03, 29 September 2007 (UTC)
Greg L (
my talk)
23:11, 29 September 2007 (UTC)
According to Wikipedia:Footnotes, Resizing references: “Some editors prefer references to be in a smaller font size than the text in the body of the article.” There is no “preferred” method of doing this—even for expansive lists of notes.
The above-quoted text discloses a good rational why reduced-size text sometimes makes good sense. Sometimes the “Notes”, or “References” sections are nothing but long lists of citations, such the references section for Psycho (1960 film). In citation-only References sections like this, all you get is a highlighted citation when you click on a footnote. Small text is adequate for this purpose. In other cases, like the Kilogram article, the notes section is truly a Notes section, where points are sometimes expand on (in addition to providing citations). Especially on some computer systems with high-res monitors, reduced-size text is too small for comfort so normal-size text in situations like this is the better option. Greg L ( my talk) 19:17, 30 September 2007 (UTC)
One mole of C-12 is already defined as being precisely 12 grams. The Australian NMI only states the obvious: how the kilogram could be defined as 1000/12 x Avogadro constant. They mention this in order to illustrate the concept of how the Avogadro constant should be used to define the kilogram in terms of silicon. The NMI Web site does not propose to fix the Avogadro constant, quite the opposite; they actually mention the 0.01 ppm uncertainty of the Avogadro constant. It isn’t proper to cite references that don't really support the statement.
I didn't place this “C-12” section here; I've only edited it. It would be nice if you could find a citable reference to someone who proposes to fix Avogadro's constant and define the kilogram in relationship to C-12 (besides the Georgia Tech professor, who really isn't part of the regular “kilogram” group of physicists). But at least this reference speaks directly to the subject of fixing the Avogadro constant at some value and defining the kilogram in terms of C-12. Greg L ( my talk) 01:38, 2 October 2007 (UTC)
So far, I've been editing text in the Kilogram article for accuracy without questioning any of the information's fundamental validity. I went in search of a citable reference to support the “Electron mass” section and could find nothing. After reading what I could about electron mass, the watt balance, and how all this ties to the kilogram, I deleted the section titled “Electron mass” after concluding that there likely (it is impossible to prove a negative) has been no reputable proposal to define the kilogram in terms of electron mass. It appears that either a Wikipedia contributor misinterpreted an NIST press release regarding the watt balance, or read an amateur-level science Web page, or someone misinterpreted Towards an electronic kilogram: an improved measurement of the Planck constant and electron mass, Metrologia 42, 431–441 (a paper often cited in articles on the watt balance). One of the byproducts of fixing the Planck constant (as would occur with the watt balance) is that the uncertainty in the electron mass would be reduced by a factor of ten. If the Avogadro constant NA is fixed (as has been proposed in atom-counting approaches) then electron mass would be precisely fixed (Redefinition of the kilogram: a decision whose time has come, Metrologia 42, 71–80) . But again, this would by a byproduct of an entirely different approach to defining the kilogram. I can find no source suggesting that the kilogram should be defined in terms of electron mass. Greg L ( my talk) 15:51, 2 October 2007 (UTC)
The Micro-g LaCoste Web site does not display properly on some computer systems and will be highly misleading. Some readers may explore the FG-5 further by hand-editing the URL after clicking on the provided link in the Links to photographs section. Notwithstanding what their Web site shows, the accuracy is not 2 mGal and is indeed 2 µGal as written in the Kilogram article.
Proof? If you read their Web site further you will find spelled-out accuracies quoting “microgal”. If you view the Micro-g LaCoste Web site using Internet Explorer, you should see the Greek “μ” character. If go to their Web page here, and View>Source, you will see that their accuracy value is coded in HTML as Accuracy: 2<font face="symbol">m</font>Gal. This explains why their Web site doesn't display correctly on some systems: it’s an old Web page that calls on Adobe’s Symbol font for the Greek character mu. According to HTML version 4.0, the proper way to encode Greek symbols is to use Unicode because all proper Unicode fonts include the Greek characters; one is not supposed to assume that Adobe’s Symbol font is installed. Unicode μ produces the Greek “mu” symbol (“μ”) and Unicode µ produces the special “micro” symbol (“µ”). With Adobe’s “Symbol” font, the μ character is “typed” with a lowercase “m”. If the Symbol font isn’t installed or isn’t supported by your system or browser, you see “mGal”, not the semi-proper “μGal”, and certainly not the Unicode-generated, perfectly proper “µGal”. Note too that while writing this article, a physicist at the NIST who is using and FG-5 confirmed to me that it has 2 µGal accuracy. His browser also shows “2 µGal” when he visits the Micro-g LaCoste Web site.
For Mac OS X users confused about this: Yes, your Symbol font is really installed. But Apple’s OS X and its apps don’t support it; at least not in 10.3. As a matter of fact, it’s more than an issue of “not supporting” the font, it appears Apple purposelessly blocked the font—probably at the system level—in order to enforce rigor and discipline among the developer community. The Mac OS since at least System 7.5.5 (probably before) can generate Greek characters using any font; Mac OS X supports Unicode system-wide. For instance, you type option-m to obtain µ and option-j to obtain ∆. Typing “∆ 50 µV” has been a trivial effort for a long time on a Mac. It appears that Steve Jobs went out of his way to make a point that Greek characters should be properly called using only one method. If you’re running 10.3.x and aren’t fully convinced, try this: open Font Book. Choose Preview>Custom. Choose Times and in the preview pane, replace everything with m. Now select some other fonts; all you get is m in different faces. Then try Symbol. Where’d all that text come from? As you can see, Font Book gives Symbol very special treatment indeed. Try this too: go to Apple’s Mail and try to use Symbol. Then try MS Word. One can see that any app that uses Apple’s system-wide font-choosing resource can’t make use of Symbol and any app that calls fonts its own way (MS Word) can make use of it. It appears that Apple blocked Symbol at the system level so Font Book has to synthesize the Greek characters by pulling them from Times. More troublesome is Safari can’t even access Symbol when asked to. This bugs me but I learned something anyway. I never would have found this out if it weren’t for two things: 1) the Micro-g LaCoste Web site, and 2) my old practice of using Symbol for the proper foot-length and minute-of-angle symbol ( ′ ) and the proper inch-length and second-of-angle symbol ( ″ ) (vs. the barbarian method, used even in some so-called “professionally produced” brochures, of using the straight-quotes " and ' ).
Anyway, I didn’t want to get into a debate on the virtues of operating systems. I provided this paragraph for the benefit of OS X users who can have a real WTF!?! reaction to the observed behavior of the Symbol font on their computers. But my primary objective is to ensure that the Kilogram article continues to show “2 µGal” even though many logical and smart people can see authoritative, clear, and convincing evidence otherwise.
Greg L ( my talk) 10:03, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
I am concerned about revisions, both on this page and on the main page, between User:Greg L, 207.190.198.130 and User:Swatjester. There appears to be a very strong difference of opinion between Greg L and Swatjester, but does this disagreement does not make either person's actions vandalism. All three users have, in edit summaries, tagged edits by the other user as vandalism. This is not okay.
Personally, I do not think using the image of the watt balance on this page is appropriate under free use restrictions, but I can easily see how this is a matter of interpretation. How much does the image actually contribute? Is the kilogram substantially equal to one possible future way of defining it? My answers are "not much, because it's just a complicated looking contraption and a face seen with a fish-eye lens" and "the two are very different" but having different answers to those questions does not make a user a vandal.
Swatjester, please stop calling Greg L's copy and paste of your comments vandalism. Greg L, and 207.190.198.130, please do not continue to add to this page posts that User:Swatjester made on User_talk:Swatjester. Enuja (talk) 00:26, 17 October 2007 (UTC)