User talk:DVdm

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Potential energy

Hello DVdm. I noticed you left a cautionary message about reverting on TSRibeye's Talk page, warning him about provocative reversions and asking that he use the article's Talk page to pursue consensus. I agree with the sentiment of your message to TSRibeye.

I can offer the same cautionary message to you. I recently did some re-working of the opening sentence of Potential energy. I also cited a reputable Physics textbook. (Prior to that, the opening paragraph was devoid of any in-line citation.) I see that you have deleted my work, including my in-line citation, and replaced it with uncited text. That is a provocative act. Deleting cited text and replacing it with uncited text is incompatible with WP:Verifiability. It would have been much better if you had resorted to a suitable Talk page in an attempt to achieve consensus or at least some mutual understanding. I am entitled to revert your edit to Potential energy but I have decided against doing that. I will watch for your next move.

In my re-work on the opening paragraph I introduced mention of conservative force which I know to be central to the concept of potential energy. After your reversion of my work, mention of conservative force is again absent from the opening paragraph of Potential energy. Do you agree that potential energy is only defined for conservative forces?

I look forward to working closely with you on this article. Dolphin (t) 07:47, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

My intervention was in perfect accordance with WP:BRD, WP:LEADCITE and WP:Lead_section#First_sentence. According to WP:BRD you are not "entitled to revert" my edit, but you are invited to join the discussion on the talk page. See details on the article talk page. DVdm (talk) 10:17, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for these links. I was not aware of WP:BRD and I found it valuable reading. Technically, it authorises reversions of the kind you exercised at Potential energy. However, it also contains many words of caution and I think all who invoke WP:BRD as justification for reverting would do well to periodically refresh their memory of the words of caution. Also I see nothing in WP:BRD to indicate it is a legitimate method for deleting cited material and replacing it with original research or material not adequately supported by citations.

I'm not involved with this article in order to conduct a war against other Users. I genuinely want to the see the article improved. My first objection to the article is that a lot of work has been done to grow the article to its present size, but all the Users involved have only managed to provide two in-line citations. I am able to contribute to the article in several ways, and one of them is to insist on a much higher level of discipline on the matter of providing in-line citations to allow independent verification of what is written in the article.

Seriously, I am genuinely interested in working with all Users willing to work on Potential energy. See you again on the Talk page! Dolphin (t) 12:37, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

Concerning your phrase "... legitimate method for deleting cited material...": I didn't find your cited phrase in the source. I asked a question about this on the talk page. Let's keep that over there, where there's more eyes.

Concerning your phrase "... and replacing it with original research or material not adequately supported by citations": I showed on the talk page that the original wording can be backed by a Feynman citation, or slightly modified. DVdm (talk) 13:19, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

Articles for deletion/Administrator abuse on Wikipedia

Hi DVdm. You recently undid a !vote by Hoecjok in the AfD discussion. While I agree that his edit was not contructive, I do not agree with undoing it. I think a better way to handle it is to strikethrough the comment and/or add the "little or no contributions" disclaimer template after his comment. I could undo it, but I think it might be better if you did it yourself. Of course, if you feel I am off base feel free to let me know where I have erred. Cheers. Movementarian (talk) 09:50, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

Hi, I had considered putting a comment (without striking through, of course), but assuming that it was just a joke, I decided against it, as that could lead to some kind of off-topic discussion, or serve as a magnet for more. If it's no joke, I'm sure this brandnew editor will put it back and perhaps even explain why. So I'd rather not follow your suggestion and just see what happens, but, if you insist on having it on board, please feel free to do what you think is appropriate. I will not interfere. Hope you don't mind. Cheers - DVdm (talk) 10:04, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

My concern is along similar lines. I am concerned that the removal of the comment will serve as a catalyst for further off topic discussion. Given the content and clear intent of the statement, perhaps your assessment is more accurate. Thank you for your quick and candid response. Cheers. Movementarian (talk) 10:33, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

Jack Sarfatti questions

Hey, thanks for the feedback on my talk page. I am finished with the Jack Sarfatti article for now. I have serious doubts about his supposed early life and academic background. The whole story seems to rely on one source: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/1997/08/17/SC46892.DTL this doesn't seem like a credible source to me. Can you offer any advice/comments? --DFRussia (talk) 22:33, 29 June 2010 (UTC)

Moved reply to article talk page. DVdm (talk) 07:01, 30 June 2010 (UTC)

Quasars and time dilation

Would it be possible to put the article on the discussions page of Time Dilation? (Cyberia3 (talk) 18:36, 30 June 2010 (UTC))

I'm afraid that the talk page wouldn't be a good place for it either, as article talk pages are for discussing the content and format of the article, not its subject - see the remarks at the top of the talk page. If you have some questions about this particular unpublished source and its possilble implications, then you can certainly try the science reference desk. Good luck. DVdm (talk) 18:44, 30 June 2010 (UTC)

Frank Lambert all over the place

A few days ago, I nominated the articles "Frank Lambert", "Entropy (energy dispersal)", and "Introduction to Entropy" for deletion. So far the vote is going unanimously against me, but nobody has provided any evidence whatsoever for Frank Lambert's notoriety. One guy keeps repeating Lambert's claim that he has caused the majority of new chemistry textbooks to adopt his idea of replacing "entropy is disorder" with "entropy is energy dispersal", but nobody has cited any evidence for that. They have failed to cite a single acknowledgment of Lambert in any textbook, nor any journal article citing an article by Lambert. Please help. Ray Eston Smith Jr (talk) 11:53, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

Oops, sorry for not having responded to this. I was away for a while. Seems moot now. DVdm (talk) 12:25, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

Time dilation and space travel

Hi. Thanks for DELETING my entry on Time Dilation! However, I would be glad to understand the deeper reason for it and on what grounds you consider my entry false (mass increasing with speed). Did you ever see (heard) about that mass indeed increases with speed, though significantly only at relativistic speed? There is nice formula for that:

m = m0 /square root of [1 - (v2/c2)]

where m0 is the rest mass

v is velocity

c is the speed of light.

Perhaps I am wrong (or Einstein was too) but is that alone not preventing any particle with meaningful mass (including any collection of them, and yes: living body!) from ever reaching the speed of light, or even close to it??

Vega2 (talk) 01:15, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

Hi Vega2, indeed that is wrong. The formula does not prevent massive particles to reach the speed of light. The formula is just consistent with (or, if you like, describes) the fact that we cannot accelerate them to or beyond that speed. Furthermore, the concept of relativistic mass is a bit old fashioned, as you can read in its article, for instance at the end of this section. Specially look at what Einstein said about it at the end of the section. Surely that quantity of an object increases as it gains speed, but for the object itself nothing changes, since it always remains at rest w.r.t. itself. If this is not sufficient, you better take this to the article talk page, where others can comment as well, but I hope this clarifies sufficiently. Cheers - DVdm (talk) 09:06, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

Hi DVdm. OK, I accept your argument. Any maybe "relativistic mass" is indeed old fashioned. But can you explain to me why it is so that particles possessing mass cannot ever be accelerated to the speed of light by their "own making" if their mass is not increasing? Is it not contradiction? Is it not the case that to be capable to accelerate so much would require infinite amount of energy (that is an amount of energy of WHOLE Universe plus much, much more)? I did not make it up, that doubt about uncertainty for survival of living bodies in such conditions. I read it in one encyclopedic Polish book written by professionals (source I attached to my original entry now removed). Cheers Vega2 (talk) 23:13, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

No, I cannot explain why massive particles cannot be accelerated to the speed of light. Science doesn't do that. That's a question for philosophy, or for religion. Science does the how-bit and leaves the ultimate why-bit to others. As to this specific case of the kinetic energy formula, T = m(γ-1)c², this formula is valid for massive particles only. There is no corresponding equation for light, so plugging the speed of light in this formula is not allowed, as there is a division by zero in there. Sometimes people say that this produces infinity, but that is just sloppy language, and actually wrong: it just is not allowed. The fomula is only valid for massive particles going at sub-lightspeed, and the fact that the mathematical limit is infinite, is again merely consistent with the lightspeed limit, it does not cause it. Cheers. DVdm (talk) 08:50, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

Hi again! Yes, I understand! I heard that photons alone can travel at the speed of light because they do not possess ANY mass (in fact "they cannot help" but to travel ALWAYS at that speed, never any slower, forever "imprisoned" by that traveling speed (and any multitude of absorptions and emission on their way with other particles). End of story. However, as far as I know (returning to my initial question), because so far only with some subatomic particles it was proven that their mass increase (at least for us, outside observers), plus any contraction or time dilation, and because we cannot guess what "they feel" or notice themselves (because we are outside), I guess only in far future we could hope to determine "inside" effects of traveling at such huge speeds, or do practical experiments if that would be ever possible for living bodies to survive. I know it is rather long way to go, leaving all philosophy or religion aside. (How big speed we achieve so far? Voyager II around 17 km/s ? Oh yes, and no living cell even at that, yet!) Cheers! Vega2 (talk) 16:13, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

FYI

Talk:Cloud_chamber#Link_Removal - could you please read my request there? Thank you, --Superbass (talk) 17:54, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

 Done - DVdm (talk) 18:19, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Links to websites

Are you are aware that a website can't mandate you can't link to the site without their permission, theres tons of caselaw to back that up, so regardless of the clause on http://mathematics.laerd.com, there is no legal obligation to abide by it or not link to them. — raekyT 21:48, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Was not aware. Now am. Thanks for the link and cheers, DVdm (talk) 07:48, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Note to self: search laerd. DVdm (talk) 09:29, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

Note

Thanks for the note. I don't use socks in the sense that you should be concerned with. See WP:SOCKS#Legitimate uses.-Stevertigo (w | t | e) 22:40, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Notification of AN/I discussion

see here Count Iblis (talk) 17:20, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

Commented here. DVdm (talk) 09:13, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

Theory of Relativity Discussion Site & useless censorship

Hi there,

It seems you are the one that deemed fit to censor a posting of mine on the theory of relativity discussion site. I think my post was quite relevant to the topic. Please read it again, I am quite sure you would find it relevant. Mind you, I am going to try and post it again: and not because I am looking for someone to agree with me LOL. It's simply because I am right in raising those issues and by censoring me you might very well reduce the chances of a future scientist to come out with a better theory that would benefit all :-).

Thank you for reconsidering your position, Diana