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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Drnathanfurious (talk | contribs) at 11:32, 31 July 2012 (→‎Mixtures / Aqua Regia). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

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Discussion of the WikiProject Chemistry - Please add your comment and discussion here. Older discussions are archived.

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This discussion page is about the Chemistry project itself, for detailed, in-depth discussions about specific topics, you'd be best served at the talk page of the specific subject, e.g., Chemicals, Chemical infoboxes, etc. There is also an image request page which might be of interest to you.

Improvements for Nucleophilic acyl substitution

I've been working on improving nucleophilic acyl substitution for several weeks, since it's one of the reaction classes listed on Wikipedia:WikiProject_Chemistry/Worklist#Chemical_reactions as needing a full article. I've added a significant amount of content, including new figures, reaction schemes, and mechanisms. It's all posted to the article's talk page, along with some known issues. The new content could use some proofreading/fact-checking. Comments and suggestions would be welcome as well. Ckalnmals (talk) 04:03, 7 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I like the update, please put it into the article! --Stone (talk) 21:44, 20 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

First I thought it is a joke ...

Have a look at Alkaline water ionizer machine but also look at doi:10.1006/bbrc.1997.6622. --Stone (talk) 14:51, 11 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

It is definitely snake oil, none of it makes sense. It is a billboard for some crack pot invention, using non-relevant external resources. Just have a look at the references. It may as well be an article about the invention of a perpetual motion machine. Plasmic Physics (talk) 23:03, 11 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, the original version of the page, as posted several years ago, is quite good. It doesn't cite sources, but it does make clear that water ionizers are essentially snake oil, backed up by pseudo-scientific claims. In fact, the original intent of the article was to describe these machines as such, not to promote their virtues. Ckalnmals (talk) 13:28, 19 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Beilstein/Gmelin

Hi folks, Is there a canonical format for citing Beilstein and/or Gmelin and/or Reaxys as references? Thanks in advance. -- phoebe / (talk to me) 16:47, 16 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Radium

Hi I looked for a primary source for the melting point of radium. I was not able to find one on google scholar. There are two numbers 960°C and 700°C which are reported in several books and abstracts, but I could find no hint on the source of that numbers. If anybody has better database to look into would be nice. ( Gmelin, Beilstein or scifinder) Thanks --Stone (talk) 21:43, 20 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

According to SciFinder, radium has a melting point of 700°C. The citation states "Hazardous Substances Data Bank data were obtained from the National Library of Medicine (US)". Theodore Gray's www.periodictable.com also cites the 700°C figure, and all of the data on the site comes from Wolfram Research via Mathematica. Unfortunately, this doesn't really help with your search for a primary source - sorry! Ckalnmals (talk) 03:27, 23 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
The 700°C have only be measured once by the Curies around 1900. Sounds strange but this might the melting point of a really non pure sample. --Stone (talk) 06:34, 6 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

OrganicBox templates up for deletion

Several OrganicBox templates have been nominated for deletion, see Wikipedia:Templates_for_discussion/Log/2012_June_21#Template:OrganicBox_tautomers -- 70.49.127.65 (talk) 04:32, 22 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Category:Chemistry prefixes and suffixes

Category:Chemistry prefixes and suffixes has been requested to be renamed to Category:Affixes used in Chemistry -- 70.49.127.65 (talk) 03:57, 26 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Apparently we are missing categorization for infixes... Category:Chemistry infixes does not exist. 70.49.127.65 (talk) 03:12, 27 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

STOPCOCK

I don#t understand, why my supplement to this article was reverted, especially the reason "vandalism"?!? I hope, You will correct again to my version. Greetings -- 217.227.252.16 (talk) 05:29, 26 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

First, do not shout at us (using capital letters). Second, link to the actual article, which I guessed was Stopcock. Third, you were reverted by a bot, which gave you the opportunity to complain directly to the owner of the bot. Finally, I do think that your edit was not vandalism, but I also think that it did not improve the article. You removed material and links. Why do you think that improved the article? --Bduke (Discussion) 07:39, 26 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Catergories for discussion

There are discussions for the categories: Chemistry prefixes and suffixes, Chemistry prefixes & Chemistry suffixes, that could do with your input. Brad7777 (talk) 15:58, 27 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Bath salts (drug)

Hi, would someone here who is a Chemist, please review the article, Bath salts (drug), to confirm the chemistry aspect of what is being written is correct. Any further citations to clarify would be appreciated. Thank you. JunoBeach (talk) 10:46, 1 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

RSC involvement

Hi all - I work for the Royal Society of Chemistry and we recently had a few of our members trained up in wiki editing to encourage them to help the provision for chemistry articles here. At present a few of them have given me particular topics that they have expertise in, but before I sent them out I wanted to ask if there was a specific approach you'd like us to take or whether we should just set them free? - Cheers! --ChemWalker (talk) 10:28, 2 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Although we generally assume good faith, for what reason would the RSC want to help Wikipedia except to promote RSC publications? I just see potential for serious and correlated conflicts of interest (WP:COI). Announcing your affiliation is a big first step in avoiding such conflict of interest, so thank you.
But assuming good faith, here are some suggestions off the top of my head:
  • Ideally new editors start slowly with small edits, and then announce intentions at this site about more serious plans (e.g. article creation, opinions about several articles) so that we could develop some consensus.
  • My favored recommendation is to strive to to adhere to WP:SECONDARY - emphasize secondary sources - books and reviews, not journals.
  • If you are looking for topics, then seek high traffic articles that are deficient in supporting general citations and descriptions of basics. High traffic articles tend to be at the fringe of classical chemistry - polymers, cosmetics, plastics, paint, food. RSC is probably ideally suited to develop articles for famous (FRS's) chemists who lack articles. Within classical chemistry, Wikipedia is in pretty good shape IMHO.

--Smokefoot (talk) 13:22, 2 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Smokefoot, thanks for your comments. Secondary sources especially is a good tip - thanks for pointing that out. The RSC is an academic publisher, but we perform that activity under the auspices of being a learned society. As part of that we work to further the chemical sciences, and education is a big part of that. More importantly it would be our members (who are largely scientists or educators) who'd be doing the editing so they should hopefully be free of any of the bias that you'd perhaps anticipate from me (though I work in Science not Publishing), and I'll ask them to announce themselves.
  • Any more for any more?

--ChemWalker (talk) 09:40, 4 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

  • Hi ChemWalker, my advise would be to just set the new editors free. Editing is not always about expanding / creating new articles. Fact checking is just as important, as is advising of others on the talk pages. We tend to frown upon article replacements. We are also always in need of good graphics like equipment descriptions or for example spectra. V8rik (talk) 20:36, 9 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Who is Paul Muljadi??

If one looks up Paul Muljadi on Google books, a long list of "books" pops up that are edited by Paul Muljadi. These all appear to be printed versions of an article from Wikipedia. See, for example, http://independent.academia.edu/PaulMuljadi/Teaching.JSR (talk) 21:24, 4 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Carbomer vs. Polyacrylic acid

I started sorting out Carbomer, moving most of the article we had there to carbo-mer, which I think is a pretty obscure, almost slangy term. Carbomer is often polyacrylic acid. The question is ... are the two so much the same thing that polyacrylic acid could move to Carbomer, or that Carbomer should redirect to polyacrylic acid, or should there be different articles, one about the various numbered forms of commercial carbomer, and the other about PAA in concept? Or should Carbomer be a disambiguation page...? What exactly is Carbomer - is it a lapsed trademark, generic name, chemical synonym - who defined it?

The antsy part about this is that the redirect carbomer from the move points to carbo-mer. If anybody does anything at all to touch it, even changing its target, we have to whine to an admin if we want to move polyacrylic acid onto it later.

So... any suggestions? Wnt (talk) 15:03, 10 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Don't let "have to get admin help", especially for a simple case like this, influence your decisions about content or organization cleanup... DMacks (talk) 15:50, 10 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Assistance request - Check for Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/ha-966

Hiyas there Wikiproject Chemistry,

A new editor submitted the above article to the article's for creation Wikiproject. The article itself looks fine, but i was wondering if anyone could glance over it and see if this assertion is correct. Molecular science isn't exactly a topic i am knowledgeable about, so i am not capable of asserting if this subject is notable, and if the article is well written (I am fairly certain someone could swap random terms around without me noticing anything odd in the article). Excirial (Contact me,Contribs) 20:23, 12 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Drugs are not my area of expertise, though a quick Google search revealed a bunch of references, with the most recent one (that I saw, anyway) being from 20011. Sigma-Aldrich and SCBT sell the (+) enantiomer, so clearly researchers still use it. I'd say it passes the notability test, and the article looks well-written and -cited. For what it's worth, the article is already live at Ha-966. Ckalnmals (talk) 22:10, 14 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
On this, I have to ask, what is the criteria for accepting an article about bioactive chemical substance? Points: (1) These are myriad, so choosing what to include and exclude is important. (2) Unless all are accepted carte blanche, making this choice is a difficult technical one, requiring clear guidelines, and in any case, significant expertise. (3) It is conceivable that wikipedia will become a home to pet ideas and molecules, if such criteria are not elaborated (with individuals wishing to self promote the molecule they are studying, through wikipedia). (4) Including a substance necessarily elevates it in apparent importance, which is only desirable if it is truly important. If rational criteria are not in place, I would suggest that these be developed quickly, and that acceptances of very technical articles on specific experimental substances be placed on hold. Prof D Meduban (talk) 17:05, 22 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
There is a brief comment on inclusion criteria at Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Chemistry. Basically, chemicals should meet Wikipedia's general notability guideline, but we have not (as far as I know) come up with any chemistry-specific guidelines. As with any subject here on Wikipedia there are probably notable topics which we do not yet cover, and there are plenty of non-notable ones which we do cover. In my opinion, the best way to handle this is make a request here or at Wikipedia:Requested articles/Natural sciences/Chemistry for any missing topics you would like to see covered (or just start them yourself) and to nominate for deletion any existing articles that you think do not meet Wikipedia's inclusion criteria. -- Ed (Edgar181) 18:08, 22 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
"significant expertise" is actually not a requirement for wikipedia (anyone can edit!). Creating an article on an obscure topic does not "necessarily elevates it in apparent importance" as long as it remains orphaned. What is important is what existing articles link to it. If you feel an article is not notable simply add an "delete" tag and let the process run its course. An acceptance process prior to article creation does not exist and is also not desirable V8rik (talk) 20:46, 22 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

You can call on me to offer guidance on subjects related to organic and biological chemistry, including as it applies to the life sciences. My current career focus is on chemical synthesis and medicinal chemistry as it applies to small molecule drug discovery, including structure-based drug discovery (involving macromolecular crystallography, small molecule enzymatic and biophysical screening, etc.). Training is through UChicago PhD, with major pharma experience. Currently a res prof at a major university. Prof D Meduban (talk) 16:53, 22 July 2012 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Meduban (talk • contribs)

Alicyclic Compounds

I fixed up the article on Alicyclic compounds. It has a section on cycloalkenes, but an article already exists for that. There are also articles on cycloalkanes and cycloalkynes. But all three of them are severely lacking. Could it be a good idea to merge the three into Alicyclic compounds? A good chunk of the content on Cycloalkanes might be tweaked to apply to alicyclics in general, so I don't think the article would be overly long. Or alternatively, especially if much more information is needed, the cycloalkenes section under Alicyclic could be moved to the Cycloalkenes article, and Alicyclic could just be a quick little thing that explains the term and otherwise links to the three other articles. Klunk6 (talk) 02:19, 23 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

In general, I don't think it is a problem if there is some duplicated content in related articles. In my opinion, the ideal situation would be having a good overview article at alicyclic compound which contains a summary of important aspects of cycloalkenes, cycloalkynes, etc. and then also have separate articles at cycloalkene, cycloalkyne, etc. which provide additional detail, as well as a clear link back to the "parent" article at alicyclic compound. -- Ed (Edgar181) 12:23, 23 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

NFPA templates

A group of NFPA templates, which are now unused since being substed into {{NFPA-chembox}} in June 2007, have been nominated for deletion. You are welcome to participate in the deletion discussion. Note that {{NFPA-chembox}} and {{NFPA 704}}, which are used have not been nominated for deletion. DH85868993 (talk) 00:03, 27 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Criteria for articles on hypothetical species

To guide future editing activity, it may be useful to establish general guidelines for which hypothetical molecules (ions etc) are sufficiently notable for articles. I think that most of us are comfortable with articles on some nonexistent compounds.

One reason that we should develop guidelines is the proliferation of computational chemistry, where all sorts of stuff is being evaluated computationally. One could envision links to these compounds could show up (and gum up) in almost any article. The sodium oxide article could, for example, start to guide readers to links to the diatomic NaO (I am sure someone is performing or has performed such calculations). Calculations vary in their quality or the tools and the quality of the context (lots of crappy papers are being written to fatten people's publication lists). One tentative suggestion is: a theoretical compound is notable if it has been the focused (not incidental) subject of a review or a book. (not just mentioned in a journal article). --Smokefoot (talk) 16:56, 29 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

It's a bit I'm not very active on WP, so please inform me if I'm wrong, but WP:GNG should suffice. Notability guidelines in general extend GNG, do not trump it, so you can't be more restrictive than WP:GNG. If a theoretical compound has been investigated in more than one paper, it deserves an article. That they proliferate is no good reason: we don't have a limit on article number. --Cyclopiatalk 14:37, 30 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I'm in agreement with Smokefoot - especially in regards to computational chemistry. There are plenty of compounds that can theoretically exist, but are hardly interesting, much less noteworthy. That said, coverage in a review and/or book seems a bit too rigorous a requirement. I'd propose the following addendum: If a theoretical compound is discussed in a given number of journal articles (maybe three?), each written by a different author, it would qualify for inclusion as well.

Also, it might be worth having a different set of requirements for theoretical compounds that people have attempted to make. In my opinion, a single article with computational data and an attempted synthesis or two carries more weight than two - or even three articles - that consist of purely theoretical data. Ckalnmals (talk) 05:01, 31 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

There are plenty of compounds that can theoretically exist, but are hardly interesting, much less noteworthy.
"Interesting" is not a meaningful criteria for us -what is not interesting to you can be to me, and viceversa. "Noteworthy" instead it is, and it is already our notability guidelines. Which basically boils down to the criteria you propose: if there are multiple reliable sources (in this case, papers) talking about it, then it's considered notable, and an article can go.
a single article with computational data and an attempted synthesis or two carries more weight than two - or even three articles - that consist of purely theoretical data.
Uhm, I am not sure. A compound can be extremly interesting theoretically but also be too difficult to synthetize currently -so you have to rely on the former. --Cyclopiatalk 10:56, 31 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The conclusion of this discussion might be added to the description page of Category:Hypothetical chemical compounds. --Leyo 11:14, 31 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Mixtures / Aqua Regia

I'm here regarding to my use of a chembox in aqua regia, which User:Plasmic Physics keeps deleting. I'm told that it's not proper to use a chembox for mixtures (notwithstanding that both the German and French articles have the same chembox style information).

If this is true, can someone suggest an appropriate way to display the information? If not, it seems rather pedantic not to allow such a thing... any reason? Drnathanfurious (talk) 11:32, 31 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

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