Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Physics/Archive November 2009

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.

Big Bang

There's a civil but deadlocked discussion at Talk:Big Bang, over whether or not the text about the Copernican principle needs expansion/clarification. Further comments from cosmologists and GR-types would be appreciated (I am neither, so it's possible that I'm misunderstanding the thread). --Christopher Thomas (talk) 16:50, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

Talking about cosmological principles: It seems to me that anthropic principle is putting undue weight on a creationist attempt to usurp the weak and strong anthropic principles by redefining them. As a result, the article currently gives the impression that the genuine anthropic principle has been discredited.

It would be great if experts from countries without a creationism problem could look at the article, check whether I am right, and restructure the article if necessary. It seems to me that the entire creationism nonsense needs to be isolated in a separate section, but it would be best if a team of more qualified editors could do whatever is necessary. Hans Adler 17:34, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

If W is the event that we exist observing the universe and L is the event that the physical parameters of the universe have values which allow for the existence of our kind of life, then obviously the conditional probability P(L|W)=1 because W is a subevent of L. So the anthropic principle is just a consequence of simple probability theory and does not deserve all this attention. JRSpriggs (talk) 20:21, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

Article status challenge - month 2

At the start of October, I suggested a challenge: by the end of the year, we should try to get all of our top-importance articles up to at least C class and our high-importance articles up to at least start class. We're making some progress - we currently have 24 start-class/top-importance articles (down from 35), 33 stub-class/high-importance articles (down from 54), and 1 stub-class/top-importance article (up from 0!). Getting all those numbers down to 0 would be a significant step forward for the state of physics articles on Wikipedia, and is something that between all the active members of this project we should be able to do! Djr32 (talk) 21:12, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

Sonofusion ?

The article about nuclear fusion was recently edited by Aqm2241 (talk) to include material on sonofusion that I felt was out of place except as a link to a separate article on the controversy (2002 ff) about it. This is one of those situations where only the opinion of genuine experts, with nearly first-hand knowledge of the evidence, is really relevant; which I, alas, am not. So I hope we might find some other editors to take a look, and at least confirm that my impressions about the status of the case are not out of line (or correct me if they are of course). See Nuclear fusion, specifically Talk:Nuclear fusion#Sonoluminescence. Thanks -- Wwheaton (talk) 22:35, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

Strange template

It seems that something called Template:Phydfghgdhf hgadfffffffs g has recently been deleted, resulting in an error message at the top of several articles. Does anyone know what this template was for? The following articles have been affected:

In addition, this template is transcluded in the template Template:Beyond the Standard Model, which is used in several additional articles.

A vandal hit a template common for those articles. Fixed. Will semiprotect the template. Materialscientist (talk) 05:47, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Portal:Physics

I posted a quick blip over on the talk page of the portal letting whoever is watching know that I'm going to try and work on getting it back up to date, but some help would be appreciated. I don't necessarily have the sources at my fingertips to keep the news feed going, and it will take me time to build up a set of reliable sources that I can pull news from. Any help there would be greatly appreciated.

Also, for the featured articles and pictures, I read around, but I couldn't find the specifics of how to "propose" a picture or article for featuring, other than to just queue them up and automate the portal page. Does anyone know if there is an established process for suggesting what to feature or how to approve it?

In the mean time, I have added some famous physicists birthdays to the Anniversary's page, added two new news articles, updated a relatively well cited article to the featured article, and put up a new featured picture. I labeled the picture and article for November, so we've got a month to build up a good supply of features, but again I need to find out if there's a procedure for that.

I'll take the discussion back over to the talk page of the portal now, but I wanted to get the word over here considering that it doesn't look like anyone has looked at the portal in almost a year :-P. FrankCarroll (talk) 02:30, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

The process for articles is described at Wikipedia:Featured article candidates. If I'm reading correctly, an article should be proposed for peer review (formal process), brought up to Good Article standards, proposed as a Good Article candidate, have problems rectified and be recognized as a Good Article, be brought up to Featured Article standards, then be proposed as a Featured Article candidate and address all of the problems that come up before being recognized as a Featured Article. In theory, some of these steps can be skipped. In practice, this usually doesn't speed things up much (just causes more problems to be listed when being evaluated as a Featured Article candidated).

For pictures, the process is described at Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates. If I'm reading correctly, it's much shorter: just make sure the picture measures up to the listed criteria, and is otherwise exemplary, and then list it. After that, it's a pass/fail vote among reviewers there, I think.

I hope this helps! --Christopher Thomas (talk) 07:55, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

I read through the info for the featured articles, and it looks like most articles are going to have to go through the peer review process first. I will start taking a look around to see if I can find some articles worthy of the review, and potential worthy of becoming a featured article. Would anyone else be willing to help me locating articles, and with the subsequent review process. We should probably clean them up within the Physics group before moving them on to Peer Review or listing them as a Featured Article Candidate.

The nomination process seems clear for featured articles, but I see no methods for resolving the nomination. How long does it stay a nomination? Who makes the final decision?

One last question: Both of these nomination pages (articles/pictures) seem to be very generalized. Are they for the main Wiki page? Should there be a separate nomination page for a Portal, or are do we just add it to the portal queue once it's approved? FrankCarroll (talk) 02:40, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

I'm afraid I don't have any more details about the process. Maybe take a look at a few past applications and ask some of the people involved where to get more information? --Christopher Thomas (talk) 17:19, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

Hopefully, this is a valid response to your question, Frank: I suggest contacting other editors from other Wiki Projects, which have portals and ask them how they determine what content qualifies to be displayed on their portal at any given time. Steve Quinn (formerly Ti-30X) (talk) 15:59, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Rfc at Talk:Celestial spheres

A request for comment on a large amount of disputed content in the article Celestial spheres, a B-grade article of low-importance within the scope of WikiProject Physics, is under way here. Anyone who can usefully contribute to the discussion, please do so.
—David Wilson (talk · cont) 15:32, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

List of nascent delta functions on AfD

Though this is more of a math article, the main applications of these integral representations for the delta function are in physics, so it seems to me that the AfD discussion would benefit from the participation of some physicists. Please comment at Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/List_of_nascent_delta_functions. Jim (talk) 16:52, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Essay spam to multiple talk pages against consensus

For some reason, Count Iblis has been adding an essay (i.e. failed guideline/policy proposal) to multiple talk pages, without discussion. I suggest these all be rolled back as there is no consensus for this addition anywhere. Tim Shuba (talk) 18:32, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

First, it was you who decided it is a "failed guideline", as you were the one who edited in the "failed" tag in the ESCA essay. So, for you to write here with a straigth face: "Count Iblis has been adding an essay (i.e. failed guideline/policy proposal) to multiple talk pages". is just unbelievable.

Now, I do agree that the proposed do not have a consensus to become official policy. However, on some pages, it is very reasonable to assume that there is a local consensus for it. On these pages (mostly where I'm a major editor) I've added the template. Count Iblis (talk) 18:59, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

This discussion is apparently occurring across a couple of different venues. Perhaps it would be best to confine it to the current discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#Fake ESCA "guideline" spamming. I've commented there. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 19:13, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

I have proposed the spam template for deletion at Wikipedia:Templates_for_discussion#Template:ESCA, so now there yet another venue. Tim Shuba (talk) 19:23, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

Old articles about antimatter and negative mass

I've finally gotten back to a thread at Talk:Antimatter regarding pre-Dirac references for the concept of "antimatter". It turns out that the term was indeed used earlier, for what amounts to a conceptual hybrid of antimatter and negative-mass exotic matter. It also looks like Schuster wasn't the only one to write about this, as he refers to at least two other papers that discuss exotic matter (one arguing for it as a logical extension of aether theories of gravitation, and another arguing for it as a logical extension of Newtonian gravity to mimic the form of Maxwell's equations). If anyone's a physics history buff, it might not be a bad idea to start a thread at exotic matter regarding old sources to incorporate into a "history of the concept" section. I'm not in a position to do the literature search, but if given a list of citations, I can find copies of the articles in question (it turns out that the Toronto Reference Library specializes in things like this).

Copyright law is annoyingly vague on whether scans of these are in public domain (and therefore uploadable). The articles cited at Talk:Antimatter are certainly public domain under copyright law of the United Kingdom, where they were published, and seem to also be under United States copyright law, due to being published before 1923, but I expect it to be a major headache to settle this in a way that satisfies Wikipedia's copyright patrol. For now, I've linked scans of these articles from the talk page, based on the arguments above and the lack of available alternatives, but I wouldn't be surprised if they're contested and disappear. Advice would be appreciated. --Christopher Thomas (talk) 23:35, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

Pool about speed of light in imperial units

See Talk:Speed of light#Pool. The background for the question can be read in the discussions before it (Talk:Speed of light#Exact in imperial units and Talk:Speed of light#c in Imperial units). ___A. di M. 16:04, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

I_z vs I₃ for isospin

Michael C Price (talk · contribs) thinks I₃ should be used instead of I_z to denote isospin projection. As far as I'm aware, Wikipedia (prior to this) used I_z for isospin everywhere. To me this is pretty much WP:ENGVAR, to Michael this is going against everyday use. Particle physics is a complex enough subject that we don't need readers to be confused by non-uniform notation across all articles. Should the statu quo (I_z) be kept, or should we switch (I₃)?

Likewise for the weak isospin (T_z vs T₃). Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 16:39, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

Well, we must be reading different textbooks and looking at different Wikis.

I have not updated T => I; ~~I don't know where that myth came from.~~ I have been updating I_z => I₃ & T_z => T₃.
1. Not sure where you get the idea that I said you made the T → I switch. Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 17:23, 9 November 2009 (UTC)
Headbomb is incorrect about prior use. Prior to my update Wikipedia seemed to be split between "3" and "z" in the text.
Most or all of the images on Wikipedia already used I₃ (i.e. the articles' images were inconsistent with the text.)
As I said previously on Template_talk:Flavour_quantum_number all my QFT textbooks (sample size 5) use either I₃ or T₃ for the 3rd component of isospin. I can't find any that use T_z. That's not to say there aren't any, but a 100% with even a sample size of 5 starts to look pretty convincing. (And I don't believe that my UK English edition books differ from the US ones.)

--Michael C. Price ^talk 17:09, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

Particle accelerators in popular culture

There's a thread at Talk:Particle accelerator#Particle accelerators in popular culture about adding an IPC section to that article. Uninvolved comments on the suggested items would be useful. The editor involved seems to be making a good-faith effort to address my concerns, but I shouldn't be the only one talking. --Christopher Thomas (talk) 21:12, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Liquid

Article Liquid is currently protected, after I reverted contributions by User:Logger9. He is currently working in his sandbox: User:Logger9/Liquid. In my view, his writing is unencyclopedic and full of redundancies. He explains elementary-school knowledge in a condescending way, puts unproportionate emphasis on fringe aspects of the lemma, pastes again and again a few micrographs from his PhD thesis, whether pertinent or not, and does not make appropriate use of linking.

I would like to invite you to have a look at both Liquid (undoubtedly a poor stub) and at User:Logger9/Liquid, and to go to Talk:Liquid to express your opinion on how to proceed. -- Marie Poise (talk) 07:28, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

I've just quickly glanced through that page. There is a characteristic pattern of reusing (over and over) large blocks of previous articles by Logger9, which I do oppose - the due cleanup takes too much time. People from WP:GLASS have experience with that and you can copy this thread there or invite them here. Not judging the liquid part for now, the solid state sections there should just be deleted. Materialscientist (talk) 11:44, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Point particle in quantum mechanics

Electron is due to be featured on the front page in a few days (Saturday 21 November, in fact), including the statement that an electron ... is believed to be a point particle. (Text)

IMO before that date the article point particle could use some editing to make clearer what the idea of a point particle actually means in quantum mechanics -- in particular, in what sense(s) such a particle does have pointlike behaviour, even though, because of Heisenberg's principle, it is not localised to a single point as we experience it.

For instance, on the talk page I've raised the example of a photon, which is a point particle, even though the photons we see are typically about 3 metres long.

My understanding is that it is the Green's function for the particle and its interactions that is what is perhaps more appropriately said to be pointlike. But the actual particle itself (and any interactions) are likely to be spread over an appreciable amount of space (and time).

If there is somebody out there more practiced at thinking about and explaining this stuff than I am (and knows some good citeable references), perhaps somebody could have a go at broadening the article to explore this, preferably before Saturday? Jheald (talk) 16:28, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

I responded here to the effect that it would be better to replace "point particle" with "elementary particle", since they mean the same thing in this context but "point particle" is confusing while "elementary particle" is unambiguous. :-) --Steve (talk) 00:43, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

Nevermind, I thought you were discussing a different article. Steve, I responded to you over at the electron talk page. Also, I want to point out that point particle and elementary particle are two different concepts (for lack of a better word).Steve Quinn (formerly Ti-30X) (talk) 01:04, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

Tachyboloid

User:Rgdboer has recently created an article Tachyboloid. On the article's talk page, the author seems to be saying he has invented the name "tachyboloid" himself, unless I've misunderstood, which would contravene WP:OR. A separate issue is that this same user has rated the article Hyperbolic orthogonality as B-class, high importance, which seems a little high to me. However I'm not a member of your project so I could have got this completely wrong. I draw it to members' attention. -- Dr Greg talk 21:46, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Introduction to quantum mechanics - discussion about intended readership

Over at Talk:Basic concepts of quantum_mechanics#Intended readership for introductory QM articles - discussion we're having a discussion about what level of reader we should aim to write introductory physics articles for. This is probably a topic of wider interest around the Physics WikiProject, as well as something that people here have given some thought to, so further views would be welcome. Djr32 (talk) 19:51, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

I would like to add that Djr32 has rewritten Basic concepts of QM and it is a lot better than it was.Steve Quinn (formerly Ti-30X) (talk) 11:43, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

This situation is not reaching consensus. There are 3 separate articles on QM, all dealing with the same information (at different levels of intended readership -- one for people who understand advanced math, one for people with some math background, and the last for people who understand no math at all). Please give your opinions on whether we need 3 different articles on Quantum Mechanics on the talk page: Talk:Basic concepts of quantum_mechanics#Intended readership for introductory QM articles - discussion. At this rate, we'll end up with 3 articles on special relativity, general relativity, Newtonian mechanics, optics, etc. in the near future. --Robin (talk) 15:53, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

Intercolates?

The article Supercritical fluid has the sentence "Supercritical carbon dioxide sometimes intercolates into buttons, and, when the SCD is depressurized, the buttons pop, or break apart." (bold mine.) But I can't find the word intercolates. Can someone tell me what this word is supposed to be? RJFJR (talk) 19:48, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

This is just a guess, but Google suggests that it might be a misspelling of "intercalates". The fluid might diffuse into the material of the button and form little pockets (bubbles) of CO₂. When the pressure is suddenly reduced, these then explode and break the button. Similar to a diver getting the bends when he ascends too quickly. JRSpriggs (talk) 21:54, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

I think you are correct. Xxanthippe (talk) 21:57, 24 November 2009 (UTC).

Typo corrected (o→a). See Intercalation (chemistry). Materialscientist (talk) 22:36, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

Thank you. RJFJR (talk) 01:39, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Template:Gravitation

I just found Template:Gravitation when I mistyped it for {{Theories of gravitation}}. Is this template of any use? It's currently unused. Perhaps it should be redirected to Template:Theories of gravitation?

76.66.197.2 (talk) 11:39, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

I nominated it for deletion. Ruslik_Zero 08:10, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

RFC at Talk:Liquid crystal

There is currently a request for comment at the Liquid Crystals article concerning whether information about topological defects in liquid crystals should be included in the article.Chhe (talk) 03:14, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

Content dispute at Solid

There's a content dispute over at Solid. I don't know what it's about yet, but I figure having extra sets of eyes can't hurt. Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 01:40, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

This conflict has reached a place where binding decisions can be taken: the admin noticeboard. At the end of the long thread Wikipedia:ANI#Repeated_Reverts_at_Solid, User:Xxanthippe has made the following proposal:

I have expressed the view before that the edits of logger9 are of indifferent quality. They demonstrate little ability to synthesise the material into an effective overview and to distinguish between relevant and irrelevant material. They are sometimes verbose and rambling. While this was not important in the earlier stages of Wikipedia it is becoming more noticeable as WP matures and its overall quality improves. This is a content issue and administrative action is not needed to deal with it. It does explain, though, why other editors are attempting to improve the articles of logger9 and are becoming frustrated at the obstacles they find in doing so.

What is more disturbing is logger9's reaction to those who attempt to develop and improve the articles that he identifies himself with on his web site http://www.wavesignal.com/. His standard operating procedure is to revert to his own version. He ignores, provokes, insults (parasite) and drives other editors away. I fear that there is only one way to deal with obsessive and recalcitrant behaviour of this sort (which unfortunately is not uncommon on WP). I suggest an indefinite ban on his editing the articles that he identifies with namely: Solid, Sol-gel, Liquid, Crystal growth, Crystal structure, Kinetic theory of solids, Transparent materials, Transparent ceramics, Ceramic engineering, Nanotechnology, Strength of glass, Physics of glass, Glass transition, Colloidal crystal, Light scattering, Spinodal decomposition, Transformation toughening, Plastic deformation in solids, Phase transformations in solids. Those of his edits that are found to be useful will be retained; those that are not can be improved without the threat of an edit war.

An indefinite ban is not a permanent ban and when the articles have settled into a steady state after the efforts of other editors logger9 can appeal for release from the ban. Xxanthippe (talk) 11:31, 28 November 2009 (UTC).

Your comments at Wikipedia:ANI#Repeated_Reverts_at_Solid would be appreciated. -- Marie Poise (talk) 16:45, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

List of version 1.0 articles?

Does this project have anywhere a list of the articles relevant to the project which have been selected for inclusion in the WP:1.0 releases, or nominated for inclusion there? Such articles are, in a lot of ways, comparatively "core" articles, and it might help get a bit more attention to them and maybe help to improve them. John Carter (talk) 17:56, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

No clue. I think as whole, people work through the Category:Top-importance physics articles and Category:High-importance physics articles categories, and leave the WP1.0 work to WP1.0 people. (See also Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Physics/Archive November 2009#Article status challenge - month 2.) Perhaps we should take a look at what WP1.0 is doing to make sure it makes sense. Or maybe others are already taking a look at it and I'm unaware of it.

Personally I'm completely unaware of what WP1.0 even is or how it works. Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 19:05, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

Basically, if you've ever heard of the various release versions of wikipedia which are made available on CD, to schools, and whatever, they (we, sorta - I've been involved in it previously) are the ones who review and select the articles for inclusion. The fact of those articles being included in those release versions is why I think that some might consider them among the "core" articles, because their inclusion in the release makes them in a way more available to more readers. John Carter (talk) 19:11, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

I think this might be looking at things the wrong way round - the contents of the releases are supposed to be selected based on the importance and quality assessments given by the WikiProjects. Aiming to pay extra attention to the ones that have been selected risks being a bit self-referential. However, there's a list of physics articles in the Wikipedia 0.7 release (and presumably something similar for 1.0?), though it's a bit of a text dump. What might be more useful would be a version of the "Current status of physics articles" table that splits by included/excluded in the latest proposed release. If someone wrote something to do this automatically, it would obviously also be useful to all the other projects. Djr32 (talk) 01:07, 29 November 2009 (UTC)