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This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 28 March 2022 and 30 May 2022. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Lesotelo1218 ( article contribs).
I can't seem to be able to do it. The best I could do was create a subscript followed by a superscript followed by a "U", which is not quite right. Polar Apposite ( talk) 23:12, 26 July 2023 (UTC)
{{
ComplexNuclide|U|235}}
to generate 235What are your thoughts on when to use 235
U rather than uranium-235 or U-235 and are there guidelines about this in place at Wikipedia?
All I could find was, at /info/en/?search=Template:Nuclide, was:
"The Nuclide templates are to be used for displaying nuclide, isotope and element symbols, specifically in formulae. They can optionally link to the page for the specific nuclide, isotope or element."
The phrase, "specifically in formulae", could be taken to mean "exclusively in formulae", but it isn't crystal clear to me.
Googling usage of nuclide symbols, when to use nuclide symols and so on yielded nothing. Even "don't use that nuclide symbol" yielded nothing about when and when not use a nuclide symbol. I also tried "when to use chemical symbols" and "don't use chemical symbols". Nothing.
https://www.wikidoc.org/index.php/Nuclear_isomer says that Co-58m is more usual than 58mCo. Even easier for the layman to understand and pronounce would be "cobalt-58m". Universities, journals, professors, and students may wish to impress, mystify, or even exclude the layman, but it is surely not Wikipedia's job to do this. Is it?
"Metastable isomers of a particular isotope are usually designated with an "m" (or, in the case of isotopes with more than one isomer, m2, m3, and so on). This designation is usually placed after the atomic symbol and number of the atom (e.g., Co-58m), but is sometimes placed as a superscript before (e.g., 58mCo). Increasing indices, m, m2, etc. correlate with increasing levels of excitation energy stored in each of the isomeric states (e.g., Hf-177m2 or 177m2Hf)"
My feeling is that 235
U and similar difficult to read symbols don't belong in the normal text of an encyclopedia article (except when telling the reader that this is another way to represent it, that is to say, *mentioning* it rather than using it), because even if the reader is familiar with this notation (a big "if") it is *still* takes much longer to read. Also, in Wikipedia, space is essentially unlimited because Wikipedia is not normally printed on paper so there is no advantage to being super compact.
It *does* belong, IMHO, in diagrams and formulas (when space is limited, and that's not always the case), and anywhere else where space is limited, or the writer's time is.
Nuclear weapon design From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia uses U-235, uranium-235, and of course the arcane, hard to read symbols mixed together, for example in,
"Materials which can sustain a chain reaction are called fissile. The two fissile materials used in nuclear weapons are: 235U, also known as highly enriched uranium (HEU), "oralloy" meaning "Oak Ridge alloy",[Edit: deleted reference]
In fact, throughout this article, and many other Wikipedia articles, and the Simple English Wikipedia, the various terms are used more or less at random. It is not Wikipedia's job, IMHO, to force the reader to become familiar with hard to read symbols by repeatedly exposing the reader to them.
Just did a quick survey of the top encyclopedia results on Google, for this. The Simple English Wikipedia uses a wrongly capitalized "Uranium-235", in,
"Enriched uranium is best known for its use in the bombing of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. The bomb called Little Boy used Uranium-235." The grammar is all over the place as well. And the two forms are combined in this sentence, in the same article it says:
Uranium-235 has 235Pa, 235Np, and 239Pu as its parent isotopes.
Encyclopedia Britannica in its article on uranium-235, uses "uranium-235" for the first twenty lines or so, which I liked, but then, with no preamble, or explanation, uses the arcane symbols. I can see how tempting it must have been to use them, but they should, IMHO, have written "uranium-235 hexafluoride" and "uranium-238 hexafluoride", instead of using nuclide symbols. I repeat, the nuclide symbols should be mentioned at some point, probably only once, in the prose, perhaps in parentheses.
To digress perhaps, but just for a moment, "triuranium octoxide" is appropriate for normal prose. Not every reader will like, or understand "U3O8" (the 3 and the 8 would be subscripts). In fact, readers are mostly repelled by even simple formulas. Unimpressive on their part, of course, but we should be compassionate. We are here to help, right?
Encyclopedia.com is to my taste. It doesn't mention a single nuclide symbol in its article. It has only "uranium-235", "the 235 isotope", "the uranium-235 isotope", and "U-235". All are have obvious pronunciations that come to mind instantly. And they are all familiar to every reader. IMHO, Wikipedia should probably start imitating this encyclopedia.
Anyway, I'm all ears. What are your thoughts? Polar Apposite ( talk) 17:03, 18 August 2023 (UTC)
an acronym should be written out in full the first time it is used on a page, followed by the abbreviation in parentheses e.g. maximum transmission unit (MTU) if it is used later in the article.( MOS:ACRO1STUSE) Hawkeye7 (discuss) 19:29, 19 August 2023 (UTC)
Isotopes should be labelled by their mass number, e.g. 14C and 18F. Deuterium (2H) and tritium (3H) may be labelled "D" (or "2D") and "T" (or "3T"), respectively.( MOS:CHEMISTRY) Hawkeye7 (discuss) 19:34, 19 August 2023 (UTC)
"The uranium-235 nucleus can split in many ways, provided the charge numbers add up to 92 and the mass numbers add up to 236 (uranium-235 plus the neutron that caused the split). The following equation shows one possible split, namely into[...]". Since it says "the charge numbers add up to 92", I thought it might be an idea to replace the nuclide symbols that show only the mass numbers with some that show both mass number and charge number. Any thoughts on that? Polar Apposite ( talk) 21:22, 25 August 2023 (UTC)
I was reading the article and was struck by how out of place the "List of US linear implosion weapons" is. The article doesn't have any other lists of bomb models other than historically significant ones. This list is as US-centric as can be. The preceding and succeeding paragraphs are about how criticality is triggered, not about what models of United States' bombs use those methods. The list is unsourced and not helpful. There is already a sentience in the preceding paragraph about how linear implosion is used in artillery shells (if that is the case, I don't know, hard to tell from scant sources). None of the linked articles in that list mention linear implosion, and those don't have many sources either. How do people feel about me deleting that list? Gravel for breakfast ( talk) 13:06, 19 October 2023 (UTC)
This article is part of a former featured topic candidate. Please view the links under Article milestones below to see why the nomination failed. | ||||||||||
|
This
level-5 vital article is rated C-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|||
This page has archives. Sections older than 90 days may be automatically archived by Lowercase sigmabot III when more than 4 sections are present. |
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 28 March 2022 and 30 May 2022. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Lesotelo1218 ( article contribs).
I can't seem to be able to do it. The best I could do was create a subscript followed by a superscript followed by a "U", which is not quite right. Polar Apposite ( talk) 23:12, 26 July 2023 (UTC)
{{
ComplexNuclide|U|235}}
to generate 235What are your thoughts on when to use 235
U rather than uranium-235 or U-235 and are there guidelines about this in place at Wikipedia?
All I could find was, at /info/en/?search=Template:Nuclide, was:
"The Nuclide templates are to be used for displaying nuclide, isotope and element symbols, specifically in formulae. They can optionally link to the page for the specific nuclide, isotope or element."
The phrase, "specifically in formulae", could be taken to mean "exclusively in formulae", but it isn't crystal clear to me.
Googling usage of nuclide symbols, when to use nuclide symols and so on yielded nothing. Even "don't use that nuclide symbol" yielded nothing about when and when not use a nuclide symbol. I also tried "when to use chemical symbols" and "don't use chemical symbols". Nothing.
https://www.wikidoc.org/index.php/Nuclear_isomer says that Co-58m is more usual than 58mCo. Even easier for the layman to understand and pronounce would be "cobalt-58m". Universities, journals, professors, and students may wish to impress, mystify, or even exclude the layman, but it is surely not Wikipedia's job to do this. Is it?
"Metastable isomers of a particular isotope are usually designated with an "m" (or, in the case of isotopes with more than one isomer, m2, m3, and so on). This designation is usually placed after the atomic symbol and number of the atom (e.g., Co-58m), but is sometimes placed as a superscript before (e.g., 58mCo). Increasing indices, m, m2, etc. correlate with increasing levels of excitation energy stored in each of the isomeric states (e.g., Hf-177m2 or 177m2Hf)"
My feeling is that 235
U and similar difficult to read symbols don't belong in the normal text of an encyclopedia article (except when telling the reader that this is another way to represent it, that is to say, *mentioning* it rather than using it), because even if the reader is familiar with this notation (a big "if") it is *still* takes much longer to read. Also, in Wikipedia, space is essentially unlimited because Wikipedia is not normally printed on paper so there is no advantage to being super compact.
It *does* belong, IMHO, in diagrams and formulas (when space is limited, and that's not always the case), and anywhere else where space is limited, or the writer's time is.
Nuclear weapon design From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia uses U-235, uranium-235, and of course the arcane, hard to read symbols mixed together, for example in,
"Materials which can sustain a chain reaction are called fissile. The two fissile materials used in nuclear weapons are: 235U, also known as highly enriched uranium (HEU), "oralloy" meaning "Oak Ridge alloy",[Edit: deleted reference]
In fact, throughout this article, and many other Wikipedia articles, and the Simple English Wikipedia, the various terms are used more or less at random. It is not Wikipedia's job, IMHO, to force the reader to become familiar with hard to read symbols by repeatedly exposing the reader to them.
Just did a quick survey of the top encyclopedia results on Google, for this. The Simple English Wikipedia uses a wrongly capitalized "Uranium-235", in,
"Enriched uranium is best known for its use in the bombing of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. The bomb called Little Boy used Uranium-235." The grammar is all over the place as well. And the two forms are combined in this sentence, in the same article it says:
Uranium-235 has 235Pa, 235Np, and 239Pu as its parent isotopes.
Encyclopedia Britannica in its article on uranium-235, uses "uranium-235" for the first twenty lines or so, which I liked, but then, with no preamble, or explanation, uses the arcane symbols. I can see how tempting it must have been to use them, but they should, IMHO, have written "uranium-235 hexafluoride" and "uranium-238 hexafluoride", instead of using nuclide symbols. I repeat, the nuclide symbols should be mentioned at some point, probably only once, in the prose, perhaps in parentheses.
To digress perhaps, but just for a moment, "triuranium octoxide" is appropriate for normal prose. Not every reader will like, or understand "U3O8" (the 3 and the 8 would be subscripts). In fact, readers are mostly repelled by even simple formulas. Unimpressive on their part, of course, but we should be compassionate. We are here to help, right?
Encyclopedia.com is to my taste. It doesn't mention a single nuclide symbol in its article. It has only "uranium-235", "the 235 isotope", "the uranium-235 isotope", and "U-235". All are have obvious pronunciations that come to mind instantly. And they are all familiar to every reader. IMHO, Wikipedia should probably start imitating this encyclopedia.
Anyway, I'm all ears. What are your thoughts? Polar Apposite ( talk) 17:03, 18 August 2023 (UTC)
an acronym should be written out in full the first time it is used on a page, followed by the abbreviation in parentheses e.g. maximum transmission unit (MTU) if it is used later in the article.( MOS:ACRO1STUSE) Hawkeye7 (discuss) 19:29, 19 August 2023 (UTC)
Isotopes should be labelled by their mass number, e.g. 14C and 18F. Deuterium (2H) and tritium (3H) may be labelled "D" (or "2D") and "T" (or "3T"), respectively.( MOS:CHEMISTRY) Hawkeye7 (discuss) 19:34, 19 August 2023 (UTC)
"The uranium-235 nucleus can split in many ways, provided the charge numbers add up to 92 and the mass numbers add up to 236 (uranium-235 plus the neutron that caused the split). The following equation shows one possible split, namely into[...]". Since it says "the charge numbers add up to 92", I thought it might be an idea to replace the nuclide symbols that show only the mass numbers with some that show both mass number and charge number. Any thoughts on that? Polar Apposite ( talk) 21:22, 25 August 2023 (UTC)
I was reading the article and was struck by how out of place the "List of US linear implosion weapons" is. The article doesn't have any other lists of bomb models other than historically significant ones. This list is as US-centric as can be. The preceding and succeeding paragraphs are about how criticality is triggered, not about what models of United States' bombs use those methods. The list is unsourced and not helpful. There is already a sentience in the preceding paragraph about how linear implosion is used in artillery shells (if that is the case, I don't know, hard to tell from scant sources). None of the linked articles in that list mention linear implosion, and those don't have many sources either. How do people feel about me deleting that list? Gravel for breakfast ( talk) 13:06, 19 October 2023 (UTC)