This page 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. |
Minor tussle. A number of the editors asserting ownership of this article are obvious fans of quantum mysticism and don't like having the science rug wisked out from under them. A few voices of reason could be helpful here. ScienceApologist ( talk) 15:50, 11 February 2008 (UTC)
A recent comparison of wikipedia's topical coverage with that of print encylopedias ( Alexander Halavais & Derek Lackaff (2008) 'An Analysis of Topical Coverage of Wikipedia', Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 13 (2) , 429–440) has compared wikipedia's coverage with that of Lerner & Trigg (eds., 2nd ed 1991) Encyclopedia of Physics. Dsp13 ( talk) 12:17, 2 March 2008 (UTC)
--Pretty weak article. All it does is point up the fact that Wikipedia is a natural phenomena, like volcanoes, for example, worthy of observation like other natural phenomena. No conclusions of any moment - just that Wikipedia is different, not better not worse, and not for any reasons of significance. Brews ohare ( talk) 20:18, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
Hello fellow editors, this is a plea for help.
If you look at Talk:Vacuum permittivity, User:Brews ohare has been fighting to get the following original research claims (or things that imply one of these claims) included in a variety of Wikipedia articles (from vacuum permittivity to vacuum permeability to relative static permittivity):
There are lots of logical problems with these claims, which I tried to explain to him on the above Talk page, but ultimately the objection from Wikipedia's standpoint is that he is unable to provide sources, hence the above claims are original research. (There are, of course, references to the contrary, but he claims to understand electromagnetic units better than Jackson, author of the canonical graduate textbook Classical Electrodynamics, as well as other authors.)
The problem is, I can't keep up with him on my own (especially as I'm about to leave town on a trip), nor do I want to be in a one-on-one revert battle. Please help, and look carefully at his [ contributions] to see the variety of places he is trying to insert the above (or things tantamount to the above).
—Steven G. Johnson ( talk) 14:42, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
PS. There is a separate argument as to whether the vacuum permittivity article should be called "electric constant". Standards organizations have begun to prefer the latter name, but have not stated that there is only one official name or that the older name is deprecated or unofficial, and the former name (and variants) remain far more popular (as measured e.g. by literature searches). My understanding of WP:NAME is that, in such cases, our longstanding policy is to use the most common unambiguous name, but a couple of users (including Brews) feel we should promote the term preferred by standards organizations. However, this is merely a matter of convention and terminology, so in my opinion it is not very important compared to the above question, which is a question of fact (of the mathematical implications of the unit/constant definitions). I mention it here only so that you don't confuse one dispute for the other. —Steven G. Johnson ( talk) 14:42, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
Could anyone with knowledge of classical electromagnetism please comment at the discussion page of Lorentz Force? I'm embroiled in an endless dispute with another (anonymous) editor about such issues as whether Faraday's Law is a consequence of the Lorentz Force. I believe that the other editor has some very basic misunderstandings about electromagnetism, and he or she believes the same about me. A second, third, fourth opinion would be much appreciated. I wrote a summary at the bottom in case you don't want to read through the endless back-and-forth. -- Steve ( talk) 18:24, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
What's the Wikipedia policy when a standards-body advocates one notation or terminology, but the majority (or perhaps the overwhelming majority) of practitioners favor a different one? This has happened in speed of light, where ISO 31 favors c0, but c is much more common. (The article was changed in recent days from c to c0.) Another example is gyromagnetic ratio, where most people use the term "gyromagnetic", but a chemistry standards-body advocated for "magnetogyric". (The article is now "gyromagnetic", but has been switched back and forth a couple times, without ever having had much good debate or consensus.)
Everyone would agree that when the term is first introduced, the different terminologies/notations should be listed out and explained. But the question still remains: In the rest of the article, and the title of the article, and other related articles, one or the other convention has to be chosen. Based on Wikipedia guidelines, what's the appropriate policy? Thanks! -- Steve ( talk) 00:33, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
Where multiple or conflicting perspectives exist within a topic each should be presented fairly. None of the views should be given undue weight or asserted as being judged as "the truth", in order that the various significant published viewpoints are made accessible to the reader, not just the most popular one.
That would make sense in the context of a special section about notational conventions, which I agree should be present in any such case. But in the rest of the article, and in the title of the article, and in related articles that mention the term, you really have to choose one or the other. For example, in the Speed of light article, scroll down to the Einstein velocity addition formula. Should it be written in terms of c or c0? What about Lorentz force, which has a number of formulas involving the speed of light--What notation should be used? In Larmor precession, should the term "gyromagnetic ratio" or "magnetogyric ratio" be used? In all these examples, it's inappropriate and impractical to list out the different conventions / notations, given the unrelated context. -- Steve ( talk) 01:15, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
Brews ohare ( talk) 16:34, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
The symbol "c" for the speed of light in vacuum is extremely recognizable to not just physicists but the general public as well (E=mc^2, anyone?) that I would be rather reluctant to change it to "c_0" everywhere. On top of that, every class I every took, paper or book I ever read and in my work as a physicist, I can't ever remember coming across an instance of the symbol "c_0". So I would vote to not use this symbol as the standard. It may be common in certain subfields but there is not question that "c" is the general standard. Joshua Davis ( talk) 17:40, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
I have removed the c_0 from Speed of Light per this discussion. -- Falcorian (talk) 00:30, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
This may be of interest to some members of this project – I've recently proposed the creation of a WikiProject on Microscopy. If interested, add your name here: Wikipedia:WikiProject_Council/Proposals#Microscopy. Peter G Werner ( talk) 18:46, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
I have nominated this article for deletion. Please join the discussion. Jehochman Talk 12:17, 4 March 2008 (UTC)
Could someone check this article out? I am not strong enough in physics or chemistry to write articles about those subjects, but a room temperature superconductor under high pressure probably is exciting news for you people. By the way, an article on silane exists already. The new superconductor seems to be based on it. Jesse Viviano ( talk) 15:10, 20 March 2008 (UTC)
Is the symbol for charge q (lower case) as in Lorentz force and Maxwell's equations or is it Q (upper case) as in electric charge and mass-to-charge ratio? Thanks. -- Kkmurray ( talk) 16:07, 20 March 2008 (UTC)
The group (mathematics) article is a current collaboration of the month in the WP Math. If some of you have time, can you please post a couple of interesting applications of this notion in physics? (Please reply either by collaborating directly or at the talk page). Thanks, Jakob.scholbach ( talk) 17:35, 21 March 2008 (UTC)
While we are at it, perhaps somebody would like to improve the supergroup (physics) article. Currently it claims that supergroups generalise groups, but that is far from obvious and is not explained. -- Hans Adler ( talk) 08:57, 23 March 2008 (UTC)
Hello,
there are currently 16 articles in the scope of this project which are tagged with notability concerns. I have listed them here. (Note: this listing is based on a database snapshot of 12 March 2008 and may be slightly outdated.)
I would encourage members of this project to have a look at these articles, and see whether independent sources can be added, whether the articles can be merged into an article of larger scope, or possibly be deleted. Any help in cleaning up this backlog is appreciated. For further information, see Wikipedia:WikiProject Notability.
If you have any questions, please leave a message on the Notability project page or on my personal talk page. (I'm not watching this page however.) Thanks! -- B. Wolterding ( talk) 16:24, 23 March 2008 (UTC)
FYI, Myrzakulov equations (2nd nomination) to delete this article. Benji boi 22:18, 20 March 2008 (UTC)
Chris, wikipedia does not work like an academic journal. A crank can write something cranky, and then others can decide to delete it or improve it. This approach can lead to good results. The wikipedia you want would lead to something like this but then on a much larger scale perhaps?.
I don't see how you can change wikipedia using "constitutional reforms". You should try to implement regime change using force instead :). The first step would be to declare independence for the physics sector of wikipedia and try to get a large number of editors on your side. If this is "de facto" accepted by the wider wikipedia community, then you've succeeded and we can just write our own constitution for physics. Count Iblis ( talk) 02:07, 26 March 2008 (UTC)
I've started creating templates to facilitate creating symbols for particles, nuclei, atoms, etc... this makes it easy to create such symbols and gives all pages the same look and feel. It's a work in progress, but it's gotten to the part where it is flexible enough to be used for just about everything. I would like to suggest replacing all instances of symbols for particles, nuclei, atoms, etc... using these templates - I've started with a few pages already, but there's no way I can do this by hand all by myself. See Category:Nuclide templates and my User:SkyLined page for an overview of what I've done so far. Feel free to comment now - it's better to raise a concern before we implement it everywhere than to have to revert it. —Preceding comment was added at 14:48, 24 March 2008 (UTC)
I also need help finding references for the correct symbols for elements, isotopes, nuclei, atoms, subatomic particles, etc. And of course for the number of protons for each element and the most common/stable isotope. See the various templates to determine which need references (mainly the SymbolFor..., ProtonsFor..., etc... subtemplates) SkyLined ( talk) 11:19, 25 March 2008 (UTC)
User AngryBacon has decided that String Theory should be called "String Hypothesis" (as well as adding a psuedo science tag to the string theory page), creating a page String Hypothesis. The string theory page has plenty of discussion of its limitations as a scientific theory, and doing this is just POV and vandalism. How can we delete String Hypothesis and String hypothesis? PhysPhD ( talk) 18:10, 19 March 2008 (UTC)
A question has been asked on the Science Reference Desk, here, about what happens when you hit a spinning ball. I was hoping somebody here would weigh in with a bit of mathematics. -- Milkbreath ( talk) 16:52, 31 March 2008 (UTC)
This page 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. |
Minor tussle. A number of the editors asserting ownership of this article are obvious fans of quantum mysticism and don't like having the science rug wisked out from under them. A few voices of reason could be helpful here. ScienceApologist ( talk) 15:50, 11 February 2008 (UTC)
A recent comparison of wikipedia's topical coverage with that of print encylopedias ( Alexander Halavais & Derek Lackaff (2008) 'An Analysis of Topical Coverage of Wikipedia', Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 13 (2) , 429–440) has compared wikipedia's coverage with that of Lerner & Trigg (eds., 2nd ed 1991) Encyclopedia of Physics. Dsp13 ( talk) 12:17, 2 March 2008 (UTC)
--Pretty weak article. All it does is point up the fact that Wikipedia is a natural phenomena, like volcanoes, for example, worthy of observation like other natural phenomena. No conclusions of any moment - just that Wikipedia is different, not better not worse, and not for any reasons of significance. Brews ohare ( talk) 20:18, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
Hello fellow editors, this is a plea for help.
If you look at Talk:Vacuum permittivity, User:Brews ohare has been fighting to get the following original research claims (or things that imply one of these claims) included in a variety of Wikipedia articles (from vacuum permittivity to vacuum permeability to relative static permittivity):
There are lots of logical problems with these claims, which I tried to explain to him on the above Talk page, but ultimately the objection from Wikipedia's standpoint is that he is unable to provide sources, hence the above claims are original research. (There are, of course, references to the contrary, but he claims to understand electromagnetic units better than Jackson, author of the canonical graduate textbook Classical Electrodynamics, as well as other authors.)
The problem is, I can't keep up with him on my own (especially as I'm about to leave town on a trip), nor do I want to be in a one-on-one revert battle. Please help, and look carefully at his [ contributions] to see the variety of places he is trying to insert the above (or things tantamount to the above).
—Steven G. Johnson ( talk) 14:42, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
PS. There is a separate argument as to whether the vacuum permittivity article should be called "electric constant". Standards organizations have begun to prefer the latter name, but have not stated that there is only one official name or that the older name is deprecated or unofficial, and the former name (and variants) remain far more popular (as measured e.g. by literature searches). My understanding of WP:NAME is that, in such cases, our longstanding policy is to use the most common unambiguous name, but a couple of users (including Brews) feel we should promote the term preferred by standards organizations. However, this is merely a matter of convention and terminology, so in my opinion it is not very important compared to the above question, which is a question of fact (of the mathematical implications of the unit/constant definitions). I mention it here only so that you don't confuse one dispute for the other. —Steven G. Johnson ( talk) 14:42, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
Could anyone with knowledge of classical electromagnetism please comment at the discussion page of Lorentz Force? I'm embroiled in an endless dispute with another (anonymous) editor about such issues as whether Faraday's Law is a consequence of the Lorentz Force. I believe that the other editor has some very basic misunderstandings about electromagnetism, and he or she believes the same about me. A second, third, fourth opinion would be much appreciated. I wrote a summary at the bottom in case you don't want to read through the endless back-and-forth. -- Steve ( talk) 18:24, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
What's the Wikipedia policy when a standards-body advocates one notation or terminology, but the majority (or perhaps the overwhelming majority) of practitioners favor a different one? This has happened in speed of light, where ISO 31 favors c0, but c is much more common. (The article was changed in recent days from c to c0.) Another example is gyromagnetic ratio, where most people use the term "gyromagnetic", but a chemistry standards-body advocated for "magnetogyric". (The article is now "gyromagnetic", but has been switched back and forth a couple times, without ever having had much good debate or consensus.)
Everyone would agree that when the term is first introduced, the different terminologies/notations should be listed out and explained. But the question still remains: In the rest of the article, and the title of the article, and other related articles, one or the other convention has to be chosen. Based on Wikipedia guidelines, what's the appropriate policy? Thanks! -- Steve ( talk) 00:33, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
Where multiple or conflicting perspectives exist within a topic each should be presented fairly. None of the views should be given undue weight or asserted as being judged as "the truth", in order that the various significant published viewpoints are made accessible to the reader, not just the most popular one.
That would make sense in the context of a special section about notational conventions, which I agree should be present in any such case. But in the rest of the article, and in the title of the article, and in related articles that mention the term, you really have to choose one or the other. For example, in the Speed of light article, scroll down to the Einstein velocity addition formula. Should it be written in terms of c or c0? What about Lorentz force, which has a number of formulas involving the speed of light--What notation should be used? In Larmor precession, should the term "gyromagnetic ratio" or "magnetogyric ratio" be used? In all these examples, it's inappropriate and impractical to list out the different conventions / notations, given the unrelated context. -- Steve ( talk) 01:15, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
Brews ohare ( talk) 16:34, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
The symbol "c" for the speed of light in vacuum is extremely recognizable to not just physicists but the general public as well (E=mc^2, anyone?) that I would be rather reluctant to change it to "c_0" everywhere. On top of that, every class I every took, paper or book I ever read and in my work as a physicist, I can't ever remember coming across an instance of the symbol "c_0". So I would vote to not use this symbol as the standard. It may be common in certain subfields but there is not question that "c" is the general standard. Joshua Davis ( talk) 17:40, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
I have removed the c_0 from Speed of Light per this discussion. -- Falcorian (talk) 00:30, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
This may be of interest to some members of this project – I've recently proposed the creation of a WikiProject on Microscopy. If interested, add your name here: Wikipedia:WikiProject_Council/Proposals#Microscopy. Peter G Werner ( talk) 18:46, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
I have nominated this article for deletion. Please join the discussion. Jehochman Talk 12:17, 4 March 2008 (UTC)
Could someone check this article out? I am not strong enough in physics or chemistry to write articles about those subjects, but a room temperature superconductor under high pressure probably is exciting news for you people. By the way, an article on silane exists already. The new superconductor seems to be based on it. Jesse Viviano ( talk) 15:10, 20 March 2008 (UTC)
Is the symbol for charge q (lower case) as in Lorentz force and Maxwell's equations or is it Q (upper case) as in electric charge and mass-to-charge ratio? Thanks. -- Kkmurray ( talk) 16:07, 20 March 2008 (UTC)
The group (mathematics) article is a current collaboration of the month in the WP Math. If some of you have time, can you please post a couple of interesting applications of this notion in physics? (Please reply either by collaborating directly or at the talk page). Thanks, Jakob.scholbach ( talk) 17:35, 21 March 2008 (UTC)
While we are at it, perhaps somebody would like to improve the supergroup (physics) article. Currently it claims that supergroups generalise groups, but that is far from obvious and is not explained. -- Hans Adler ( talk) 08:57, 23 March 2008 (UTC)
Hello,
there are currently 16 articles in the scope of this project which are tagged with notability concerns. I have listed them here. (Note: this listing is based on a database snapshot of 12 March 2008 and may be slightly outdated.)
I would encourage members of this project to have a look at these articles, and see whether independent sources can be added, whether the articles can be merged into an article of larger scope, or possibly be deleted. Any help in cleaning up this backlog is appreciated. For further information, see Wikipedia:WikiProject Notability.
If you have any questions, please leave a message on the Notability project page or on my personal talk page. (I'm not watching this page however.) Thanks! -- B. Wolterding ( talk) 16:24, 23 March 2008 (UTC)
FYI, Myrzakulov equations (2nd nomination) to delete this article. Benji boi 22:18, 20 March 2008 (UTC)
Chris, wikipedia does not work like an academic journal. A crank can write something cranky, and then others can decide to delete it or improve it. This approach can lead to good results. The wikipedia you want would lead to something like this but then on a much larger scale perhaps?.
I don't see how you can change wikipedia using "constitutional reforms". You should try to implement regime change using force instead :). The first step would be to declare independence for the physics sector of wikipedia and try to get a large number of editors on your side. If this is "de facto" accepted by the wider wikipedia community, then you've succeeded and we can just write our own constitution for physics. Count Iblis ( talk) 02:07, 26 March 2008 (UTC)
I've started creating templates to facilitate creating symbols for particles, nuclei, atoms, etc... this makes it easy to create such symbols and gives all pages the same look and feel. It's a work in progress, but it's gotten to the part where it is flexible enough to be used for just about everything. I would like to suggest replacing all instances of symbols for particles, nuclei, atoms, etc... using these templates - I've started with a few pages already, but there's no way I can do this by hand all by myself. See Category:Nuclide templates and my User:SkyLined page for an overview of what I've done so far. Feel free to comment now - it's better to raise a concern before we implement it everywhere than to have to revert it. —Preceding comment was added at 14:48, 24 March 2008 (UTC)
I also need help finding references for the correct symbols for elements, isotopes, nuclei, atoms, subatomic particles, etc. And of course for the number of protons for each element and the most common/stable isotope. See the various templates to determine which need references (mainly the SymbolFor..., ProtonsFor..., etc... subtemplates) SkyLined ( talk) 11:19, 25 March 2008 (UTC)
User AngryBacon has decided that String Theory should be called "String Hypothesis" (as well as adding a psuedo science tag to the string theory page), creating a page String Hypothesis. The string theory page has plenty of discussion of its limitations as a scientific theory, and doing this is just POV and vandalism. How can we delete String Hypothesis and String hypothesis? PhysPhD ( talk) 18:10, 19 March 2008 (UTC)
A question has been asked on the Science Reference Desk, here, about what happens when you hit a spinning ball. I was hoping somebody here would weigh in with a bit of mathematics. -- Milkbreath ( talk) 16:52, 31 March 2008 (UTC)