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I've added tags proposing that Physics#History be merged into History of Physics and replaced with a much shorter summary. The current history section dominates the article, accounting for probably more than half the text. Summarizing the history briefly would allow room to expand the sections on Theories and Research, which I think should constitute the bulk of this article. Gnixon 16:16, 16 July 2007 (UTC)
I've recently made a number of WP:BOLD changes to the article. My goal was to rearrange existing content into the skeleton of an article with expanded coverage. To make room for more discussions of theory and content, I made the following cuts:
I also moved each of the theories and subfields into their own subsections. Each needs to be greatly expanded to justify its own subsection, but it seems entirely appropriate to do so. In addition to the above major changes, I also added a couple of images. Please help to expand the new subsections, or comment here if you think I'm a dunce for doing this. Cheers, Gnixon 00:38, 17 July 2007 (UTC).
About a week after proposing and making changes above, which left the article in sort of a skeleton form, only one or two of the sections had been expanded by others (my thanks to those who wrote something). Because of that, I've gone ahead and copied info into each section from the leads of relevant main articles. Unfortunately, most of those articles aren't very good, so the writing copied here is mediocre and inconsistent, but at least there's something. I've re-deleted the gigantic, awful History section twice after it was reinserted by people who seemed to think the deletion was simple vandalism. If people disagree with deleting that section, or with the other major changes I've made, please comment here so we can discuss them further. I'm not trying to WP:OWN this article, but there's been very little life on this page over the past few months. Gnixon 03:34, 22 July 2007 (UTC)
Since the text copied from other articles isn't that great, I'd encourage knowledgeable editors to try rewriting a section from scratch. If incremental improvements are possible, that's great, too, but please try to avoid adding unnecessary detail into this very broad article. Gnixon 03:34, 22 July 2007 (UTC)
I have put the relativity section just before the quantum mechanics section, instead of just after it. My main reason for doing that is that the quantum mechanics section refers to relativity but not vice versa. Second, there is a widespread opinion that relativity represents less of a break with classical mechanics than does quantum mechanics. Third, relativity was largely complete by 1915, when quantum mechanics was still in its early stages. Cardamon 00:33, 3 August 2007 (UTC)
I surprised this article has not been featured yet. Let's fix it up, folks! Amit 18:49, 6 August 2007 (UTC)
There's been a lot of work put into the lead section at the development page, and it hopefully also incorporates some elements from the current lead section: thus, I will now move it to the main article for some exposure. This is by no means the final product, and feel free to modify it as you see fit, but please help the article review process by also putting the reasoning for your changes at the wip page. Krea 02:28, 13 September 2007 (UTC)
If anyone can help with the translation of the word phusis, or whatever the appropriate progenitor word was, that would be helpful. Thank you. Krea 02:57, 13 September 2007 (UTC)
This sentence:
Generally seen as an important subject, advances in physics often translate to the technological sector, and sometimes resonate with the other sciences, and even mathematics and philosophy.
had a couple of problems. It seems to say that advances in physics are generally seen as an important subject, although one would expect it to say that physics is an important subject. Also, in physics, translate and resonate can be verbs describing motion so, at least to my ears, the sentence comes off as an unintentional pun. I find myself wondering if there are subjects with which advances in physics occasionally rotate or vibrate. I did a minimal rewrite of the sentence. Cardamon 07:17, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
Let me note here that El C made a revert to the old lead section and mentioned that he thought it was better. Firstly, please refrain from reverting back to the old lead without more discussion, especially as the new lead section is only here for general review: I did not delete the old one.
I wont go into the reasons why I think the new lead supersedes the old one here unless anyone explicitly brings it up, but I would note that this issue is far from resolved amongst a few editors, and I encourage people to discuss their objections. Thank you. Krea 15:38, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
I won't have much time to work on the article in the near future, but I'd like to make a couple comments about recent changes. I'll sign each paragraph here to help with threading. Gnixon 06:11, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
First, I have to admit I'm not a big fan of the new lead. My main gripe is that it waxes too philosophical about the nature of physics and its importance. It's better, I think, to lay out facts about the topic simply. The new lead is not a summary of the article, as WP:LEAD indicates it should be. The old lead wasn't perfect, particularly on the point of summarizing the article, but I personally think we should revert to it until the new one improves some more. Gnixon 06:11, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
Second, the new section on applied physics contains useful information, but the presentation is horrible. Articles should use bulleted lists only sparingly (as a guideline somewhere indicates), but that section has a list of probably 30 or more topics that are somehow related to physics. Until the list can be reformatted into readable prose, I think it should be removed. Gnixon 06:11, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
Finally, I'm glad you guys from the "work in progress" page are back to working on the main article. I haven't looked at those pages recently, but I look forward to seeing what you've come up with. One request: before you make big changes like replacing the lead, please post here (with a copy of the text) to get comments from those of us who haven't been following along at the WIP pages. Gnixon 06:11, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
There is a section currently called fields which I propose to rename fields of physics, if no one objects in the next several days. My problem is that the bare word field is ambiguous in a physics article, as field has a defined meaning which conflicts with its use as a header. -- Ancheta Wis 10:31, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
For annotating Newton's quotes, it is possible to interpolate footnotes directly, thanks to the wiki technology. Might this be acceptable? It feels strange to do so, because it may interfere with the readings directly from Newton's mind, as it were. Might that be alright? -- Ancheta Wis 11:29, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
For example, Feynman Vol. 1 chapter 22 directly explains part of Newton's 3rd quote. I can use a wiki link or interpolate a footnote, or I could just talk about it outside the quote, so as not to disturb it. Which might be preferable? -- Ancheta Wis 11:36, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
The history section implicitly contains Newton's physical approximations. Looking back on this, which seems natural because of my training in physics, Newton's approach to these physical approximations is the subject of academic research to this day. There does not seem to be enough material in the encyclopedia about this. Do any editors have any suggestions? -- Ancheta Wis 10:02, 20 September 2007 (UTC)
Ancheta, Krea. I'm really glad you guys are back to working on the article directly, but it would have been nice if, before making sweeping changes, you'd post the new text on this page for pre-discussion. I know much of the content you've brought in exists at the WIP pages, but not everyone looks at those.
In my opinion, there are a number of problems with the new material, and I think the previous versions were better---my first instinct is to revert and work on proposed new text here. Instead, in the interest of avoiding edit warring (which I don't have time for, anyway), here are some comments: ( Gnixon 15:30, 20 September 2007 (UTC))
These new blocks of text are well-motivated, but they need a lot of work. Gnixon 15:30, 20 September 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 3 | Archive 4 | Archive 5 | Archive 6 | Archive 7 | → | Archive 9 |
I've added tags proposing that Physics#History be merged into History of Physics and replaced with a much shorter summary. The current history section dominates the article, accounting for probably more than half the text. Summarizing the history briefly would allow room to expand the sections on Theories and Research, which I think should constitute the bulk of this article. Gnixon 16:16, 16 July 2007 (UTC)
I've recently made a number of WP:BOLD changes to the article. My goal was to rearrange existing content into the skeleton of an article with expanded coverage. To make room for more discussions of theory and content, I made the following cuts:
I also moved each of the theories and subfields into their own subsections. Each needs to be greatly expanded to justify its own subsection, but it seems entirely appropriate to do so. In addition to the above major changes, I also added a couple of images. Please help to expand the new subsections, or comment here if you think I'm a dunce for doing this. Cheers, Gnixon 00:38, 17 July 2007 (UTC).
About a week after proposing and making changes above, which left the article in sort of a skeleton form, only one or two of the sections had been expanded by others (my thanks to those who wrote something). Because of that, I've gone ahead and copied info into each section from the leads of relevant main articles. Unfortunately, most of those articles aren't very good, so the writing copied here is mediocre and inconsistent, but at least there's something. I've re-deleted the gigantic, awful History section twice after it was reinserted by people who seemed to think the deletion was simple vandalism. If people disagree with deleting that section, or with the other major changes I've made, please comment here so we can discuss them further. I'm not trying to WP:OWN this article, but there's been very little life on this page over the past few months. Gnixon 03:34, 22 July 2007 (UTC)
Since the text copied from other articles isn't that great, I'd encourage knowledgeable editors to try rewriting a section from scratch. If incremental improvements are possible, that's great, too, but please try to avoid adding unnecessary detail into this very broad article. Gnixon 03:34, 22 July 2007 (UTC)
I have put the relativity section just before the quantum mechanics section, instead of just after it. My main reason for doing that is that the quantum mechanics section refers to relativity but not vice versa. Second, there is a widespread opinion that relativity represents less of a break with classical mechanics than does quantum mechanics. Third, relativity was largely complete by 1915, when quantum mechanics was still in its early stages. Cardamon 00:33, 3 August 2007 (UTC)
I surprised this article has not been featured yet. Let's fix it up, folks! Amit 18:49, 6 August 2007 (UTC)
There's been a lot of work put into the lead section at the development page, and it hopefully also incorporates some elements from the current lead section: thus, I will now move it to the main article for some exposure. This is by no means the final product, and feel free to modify it as you see fit, but please help the article review process by also putting the reasoning for your changes at the wip page. Krea 02:28, 13 September 2007 (UTC)
If anyone can help with the translation of the word phusis, or whatever the appropriate progenitor word was, that would be helpful. Thank you. Krea 02:57, 13 September 2007 (UTC)
This sentence:
Generally seen as an important subject, advances in physics often translate to the technological sector, and sometimes resonate with the other sciences, and even mathematics and philosophy.
had a couple of problems. It seems to say that advances in physics are generally seen as an important subject, although one would expect it to say that physics is an important subject. Also, in physics, translate and resonate can be verbs describing motion so, at least to my ears, the sentence comes off as an unintentional pun. I find myself wondering if there are subjects with which advances in physics occasionally rotate or vibrate. I did a minimal rewrite of the sentence. Cardamon 07:17, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
Let me note here that El C made a revert to the old lead section and mentioned that he thought it was better. Firstly, please refrain from reverting back to the old lead without more discussion, especially as the new lead section is only here for general review: I did not delete the old one.
I wont go into the reasons why I think the new lead supersedes the old one here unless anyone explicitly brings it up, but I would note that this issue is far from resolved amongst a few editors, and I encourage people to discuss their objections. Thank you. Krea 15:38, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
I won't have much time to work on the article in the near future, but I'd like to make a couple comments about recent changes. I'll sign each paragraph here to help with threading. Gnixon 06:11, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
First, I have to admit I'm not a big fan of the new lead. My main gripe is that it waxes too philosophical about the nature of physics and its importance. It's better, I think, to lay out facts about the topic simply. The new lead is not a summary of the article, as WP:LEAD indicates it should be. The old lead wasn't perfect, particularly on the point of summarizing the article, but I personally think we should revert to it until the new one improves some more. Gnixon 06:11, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
Second, the new section on applied physics contains useful information, but the presentation is horrible. Articles should use bulleted lists only sparingly (as a guideline somewhere indicates), but that section has a list of probably 30 or more topics that are somehow related to physics. Until the list can be reformatted into readable prose, I think it should be removed. Gnixon 06:11, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
Finally, I'm glad you guys from the "work in progress" page are back to working on the main article. I haven't looked at those pages recently, but I look forward to seeing what you've come up with. One request: before you make big changes like replacing the lead, please post here (with a copy of the text) to get comments from those of us who haven't been following along at the WIP pages. Gnixon 06:11, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
There is a section currently called fields which I propose to rename fields of physics, if no one objects in the next several days. My problem is that the bare word field is ambiguous in a physics article, as field has a defined meaning which conflicts with its use as a header. -- Ancheta Wis 10:31, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
For annotating Newton's quotes, it is possible to interpolate footnotes directly, thanks to the wiki technology. Might this be acceptable? It feels strange to do so, because it may interfere with the readings directly from Newton's mind, as it were. Might that be alright? -- Ancheta Wis 11:29, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
For example, Feynman Vol. 1 chapter 22 directly explains part of Newton's 3rd quote. I can use a wiki link or interpolate a footnote, or I could just talk about it outside the quote, so as not to disturb it. Which might be preferable? -- Ancheta Wis 11:36, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
The history section implicitly contains Newton's physical approximations. Looking back on this, which seems natural because of my training in physics, Newton's approach to these physical approximations is the subject of academic research to this day. There does not seem to be enough material in the encyclopedia about this. Do any editors have any suggestions? -- Ancheta Wis 10:02, 20 September 2007 (UTC)
Ancheta, Krea. I'm really glad you guys are back to working on the article directly, but it would have been nice if, before making sweeping changes, you'd post the new text on this page for pre-discussion. I know much of the content you've brought in exists at the WIP pages, but not everyone looks at those.
In my opinion, there are a number of problems with the new material, and I think the previous versions were better---my first instinct is to revert and work on proposed new text here. Instead, in the interest of avoiding edit warring (which I don't have time for, anyway), here are some comments: ( Gnixon 15:30, 20 September 2007 (UTC))
These new blocks of text are well-motivated, but they need a lot of work. Gnixon 15:30, 20 September 2007 (UTC)