Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Physics/Archive June 2008
This is an archive of past discussions on Wikipedia:WikiProject Physics. 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. |
Request for help at quantum articles
There is a dispute. Please see Talk:Shor's algorithm and Talk:Quantum computer. Skippydo (talk) 15:19, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
Request for help at Siphon
There is a debate on Talk:Siphon that is going around in circles.--Yannick (talk) 14:21, 7 June 2008 (UTC)
Cold fusion
Please give your thoughts at Talk:Cold fusion. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 18:00, 1 June 2008 (UTC)
- Apparently, the most energetic editors of Cold fusion believe in it. The lead concludes "Since then, several reviews of the field published in peer-reviewed journals have concluded that cold fusion has been demonstrated by experiments which result in excess heat production and nuclear reaction products such as helium-4. Some experiments have shown low-level neutron production, X-ray emission, and transmutation of elements.". What a travesty. JRSpriggs (talk) 00:49, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
The expression 'peer-reviewed' means very little these days. Now that anybody with a computer can produce a professional-looking journal and distribute it by demand-publishing, any crackpot group can create one (e.g. Journal of Scientific Exploration). They can then approve each other's nonsense-ideas without contravening the 'letter' of the peer-review principle - while still disgracing its 'spirit'. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.142.62.61 (talk) 19:07, 14 June 2008 (UTC)
I agree that the article could really use a few more eyes. There is a User:Pcarbonn and an anonymous IP (possibly the same) who appear to be working very hard to give the article a tone more favorable to cold fusion than a rather critical 2004 DOE report. PCarbonn is very interested and informed about the topic, and quite willing to work with references, but in my opinion tends to interpret references and their significance in a much more favorable light toward cold fusion than most scientists would read them. It seems to be getting difficult to keep the talk page from degenerating into a debate over cold fusion. Gnixon (talk) 15:08, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
- Agreed with all of that. I worked closely with Pcarbonn during the review, and I was happy with the end product of the review on the 29th. We finally have a vigorous conversation on the article talk page, so I've changed the link above to point there, for people who want to weigh in. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 16:35, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
- Okay, thanks, we got enough participation on the talk page that I felt comfortable editing the lead myself. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 18:15, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
- One more thing: we need some help from someone comfortable with quantum chemistry or physics to insert a couple of sentences to balance the sentence in the lead that says that some consider cold fusion to be consistent with textbook physics. Volunteers are encouraged to leave a message either on the article talk page or my talk page. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 18:28, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
Updated current activity
Hope everyone's happy with what I did. Should be easier to maintain from now on. [[::User:Headbomb|Headbomb]] ([[::User talk:Headbomb|ταλκ]] · [[::Special:Contributions/Headbomb|κοντριβς]]) 23:29, 11 June 2008 (UTC)
- Sorry, what are you referring to? Gnixon (talk) 23:32, 11 June 2008 (UTC)
The "current activity" box on the right of the wikiproject page. T'was dead (or didn't get a good update) for many months. [[::User:Headbomb|Headbomb]] ([[::User talk:Headbomb|ταλκ]] · [[::Special:Contributions/Headbomb|κοντριβς]]) 23:41, 11 June 2008 (UTC)
- Oh, thanks! That looks good (at a glance). Gnixon (talk) 00:22, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
Projects of the Week section
I've been thinking of doing a section named "Projects of the week" for a while. We'd go through "top" importance articles, then "high importance" articles, etc... to focus our efforts. Every week we'd assess the importance and quality of unassessed articles, then we'd follow a schedule that goes more or less like this:
- Pre-launch
- Clarify what's "top", "high", "mid" and "low" importance within WikiProject Physics.
- Re-assess the quality and importance of all "top" and "high" importance articles
- Build the Projects of the Week layout for the main page.
Once that's done, we'd launch the Projects of the Weeks section, with this schedule.
- First week:
- Start to assess the quality and importance of all unassessed articles.
- Start to re-assess the quality and importance of all "mid" importance articles.
- Work on the 10 highest importance articles of lowest quality.
- Second week:
- Continue to re-assess the quality and importance of all unassessed articles.
- Continue to re-assess the quality and importance of all "mid" importance articles.
- Work on the 10 highest importance articles of lowest quality.
- Etc...
After the "mid" importance we'd move on to assessing the "low" importance articles, and after the "unassessed" articles etc...
What say y'all? [[::User:Headbomb|Headbomb]] ([[::User talk:Headbomb|ταλκ]] · [[::Special:Contributions/Headbomb|κοντριβς]]) 19:59, 13 June 2008 (UTC)
Created Wikipedia:WikiProject Physics/Projects of the Week. [[::User:Headbomb|Headbomb]] ([[::User talk:Headbomb|ταλκ]] · [[::Special:Contributions/Headbomb|κοντριβς]]) 21:24, 13 June 2008 (UTC)
- Just to be clear, the "work on the 10 highest importance articles" can be some of the same articles week after week, right? Otherwise it would seem to be an overly optimistic and rigid timetable. Also, could you correct the typo under "second week" above? Thx, --Steve (talk) 00:03, 14 June 2008 (UTC)
- Well it could be some of the same articles week after week. What I had in mind is something like this. Working on the worst articles of highest importance would probably mean that we'll start with stubs of top importance. First week we'd work on the first 10 stubs of "top" importance (alphabetically). After a week, we'd re-assess which articles are the "worst". Out of the 10 stubs we worked on, 4 are now start class, 2 B-Class, 2 A-class class and two are still stub-class, meaning that the "demography" of the top importance articles is 4 FA, 12 A-Class, 29 B class, 29 Start class and 5 stubs. Next week projects consists of the 5 stubs, and 5 start-class. And so on until we hit let's say B class all across. And then we move on to "high" importance articles. Etc. It's not that the work has to be completed by next week, it's that we'd work on that them for a week. If it's still amongst the worst next week, then it'll still be worked on. [[::User:Headbomb|Headbomb]] ([[::User talk:Headbomb|ταλκ]] · [[::Special:Contributions/Headbomb|κοντριβς]]) 05:27, 14 June 2008 (UTC)
- BTW I don't see the typo, so feel free to correct it. [[::User:Headbomb|Headbomb]] ([[::User talk:Headbomb|ταλκ]] · [[::Special:Contributions/Headbomb|κοντριβς]]) 05:27, 14 June 2008 (UTC)
- I think this is a great idea, and we could use someone to rally the troops. Just try to bite off only what we can chew. Gnixon (talk) 05:30, 14 June 2008 (UTC)
- Two of the bullet points under "second week" are identical. Did you mean to have one of them say something else? --Steve (talk) 05:46, 14 June 2008 (UTC)
- Sorry, I just threw the general idea out there, with very little regards as to how it came out :P. The real efforts are made here. Things are incredibly rough around the edges since it's still "brainstorming" mode. Don't bother going to the discussion page first, just edit and throw your ideas. [[::User:Headbomb|Headbomb]] ([[::User talk:Headbomb|ταλκ]] · [[::Special:Contributions/Headbomb|κοντριβς]]) 06:20, 14 June 2008 (UTC)
Top
I would think Physics and the "main articles" corresponding to each of its subsections should be considered of high importance. I seem to recall that many of them weren't very good. Gnixon (talk) 13:21, 14 June 2008 (UTC)
Reviewing "cheat sheet"
We're building a sort of standard "To do list" that could be used to systematically improve articles. Check it out:
- as it may be useful to you
- as you may have ideas that would help us
- as you may know of other "to do lists" that we don't
- as you may know of another wikiproject that could use something like it.
Headbomb {— The greatest sin is willful ignorance.
— ταλκ / κοντριβς/Projects of the Week 03:14, 15 June 2008 (UTC)
FAR listing for Plate tectonics
Plate tectonics has been nominated for a featured article review. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to featured quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, articles are moved onto the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article from featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Reviewers' concerns are here.
Roche limit FAR
Roche limit has been nominated for a featured article review. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to featured quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, articles are moved onto the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article from featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Reviewers' concerns are here.
Edit wars at Joule–Thomson effect and Isenthalpic process
At isenthalpic process an editor wants to stick to a statement like:
"Process is isenthalpic if there is no transfer of heat to (or from) the surroundings and no work done on (or by) the surroundings."
Which is trivially false.
But in certain gas dynamcs setting it can be true. But that's a very specific thing and such a sweeping statement without the proper context is extremely misleading.
At Joule–Thomson effect, an editor doesn't see how Joule-free expansion is different from the Joule-Thomson throttling process.
Both editors seem to have studied thermal physics from non-rigorous books meant for chemists or engineers. Count Iblis (talk) 14:04, 17 June 2008 (UTC)
Help? What is this stuff? Tim Vickers (talk) 18:14, 17 June 2008 (UTC)
I think that the wiki OR policy has had a devastating influence on many of the thermal and statistical physics articles. I've explained that here Count Iblis (talk) 21:30, 17 June 2008 (UTC)
It's not the OR policy that is the problem, it's the LACK of ACTUAL reading of the sources, and precise references to what statements support your side of things. I picked up Reif, and quoted a book section on it and BAM the problem was settled. Referencing is not matter of place a [1] next to a claim. You need to provide the book, chapter, page, and be ready to directly quote from it.
And yes, giving an overview of the topic is always a good idea. See List of baryons for what I mean. I could've just given the list and not explain a thing about anything, but then the list would've been almost useless to anyone but Ph.Ds in physics who've gone through the awful rite of figuring out what the hell is isospin, and when that's figured out, why the hell it's still around. Going back to first principles is always better than just waving your hands and saying "well duh". Headbomb {ταλκ – WP Physics: PotW} 02:51, 18 June 2008 (UTC)
- This discussion should probably be continued on the linked page instead of here. Gnixon (talk) 04:34, 18 June 2008 (UTC)
- Yes, the discussion is taking place on the linked place. Headbomb's intervention was actually prompted by my previous posting on this page about the edit war. Headbomb took the time to type in the quotes from Reif's textbook, which I was too lazy to do, so thanks again!
- Anyway, that indeed ended the edit war. But the problem under discussion is actually the fact that for many years such technical discussions on the talk page were not going on. When you or me visit the article try to correct problems, occasionally triggering edit wars which then get settled that is a good thing. My argument is that the lesser an expert you are, the more effort it takes to properly use the sources. Every student, Ph.D student, Professor, etc. knows this all too well. Reading textbooks does often involve doing some calculations, solving some problems to properly understand what is written. Count Iblis (talk) 14:16, 18 June 2008 (UTC)
- Indeed but that's not the OR policy's fault.Headbomb {ταλκ – WP Physics: PotW} 14:18, 18 June 2008 (UTC)
I think this article could use a few more sets of eyes on it. It has several regular single-topic editors who are evidently fans of the theory, and want to relegate any mention of it being mostly ignored by physicists—despite Scientific American saying exactly that—to a long-winded opinion section. (That section is, possibly, original research in and of itself.) Thanks! -- SCZenz (talk) 19:21, 20 June 2008 (UTC)
List class and Template class
Do you think that the bot should automatically handle these and update the Article ratings table? Or should they be left out of the table?
Is there a need for the list class, or do you prefer to consider lists "articles"? Headbomb {ταλκ – WP Physics: PotW} 21:51, 20 June 2008 (UTC)
Help required to test drive some things in Projects of the Week
Could you all head over here?
Mainly it involves either trying the Cheetsheat to see if there's anything that's missing, useless, or that needs improvement. It takes about 5 to 15 minutes per article (depending on if you improve the article along the way) to fill, and gives a real nice overview of the state of the article and what remains to be done. I tried it at Talk:Zeroth law of thermodynamics and I gotta it's really, really, helpful.
Also, we (or at least I, but I'm sure this is generally agreed to be a good idea) want to make sure that the criteria for Top importance are sane. Tackling this could from 5 minutes if only want to take a quick glance, to about 30 mins to give a more thorough check. Helping here doesn't involve much more than browsing Category:Top-importance physics articles, noting what you think should not be there and how you would personally rate it in terms of importance. More details details of that are on the PotW talk page.
10-20 minutes of your time there would give a huge truckload of help to PotW and WP:Phys in general, AND, will in turn give you at least a moderate amount of help in building an article you wrote if you give a test run to the cheatsheet. Plus you could win a blue sparkled pass for the AppreciationFest! Ok that last part was lame, but you get the point.Headbomb {ταλκ – WP Physics: PotW} 06:18, 23 June 2008 (UTC)
Aerodynamic lift
I come seeking support in a silly edit war at Common misconceptions. Relevant discussion may be found at User_talk:Jetstream_Rider. Jetsream wants to add an entry stating that the force applied to the air by an airplane wing is different in magnitude from the force applied by the air to the wing (lift). Perhaps if someone besides me could try explaining Newton's Third Law, he would be more apt to listen. Thanks to anyone who takes the time to check it out. Rracecarr (talk) 19:10, 23 June 2008 (UTC)
While I would tend to favour a NASA reference over many things, Jetstream does provide references for his statements. I don't know if the statements are correct, but IMO this section should be formated in the following way
- Common misconception 1 (ref)
- Small explanation of why it is wrong
- Common misconception 2 (ref)
- Small explanation of why it is wrong
- Common misconception 3 (ref)
- Small explanation of why it is wrong
- Common misconception 4 (ref)
- Small explanation of why it is wrong
etc..
Then
- Correct theory
- Small explanation of correct theory (ref)
You are dangerously close to 3RR, so I would advise both of you to go to the talk page and settle things there. When references contradict each other, there is no other solution that to identify which reference is wrong. The only references that should be allowed here is are text books on fluid dynamics written that provides a full development of the lift equations. Headbomb {ταλκ – WP Physics: PotW} 19:38, 23 June 2008 (UTC)
- um, er, the references do not contradict each other. The references are all good, it is just the interpretation of them that is off. Rracecarr (talk) 19:43, 23 June 2008 (UTC)
- Contradicting interpretation, or contradicting reference isn't "really" important. I'll review things later tonight, this includes refs and whatnot. My comments so far are preliminary. I'm just glad that both of you are still civil. Headbomb {ταλκ – WP Physics: PotW} 20:17, 23 June 2008 (UTC)
- The argument started over my edit of "lift is caused by deflecting the air downward". While I agree there is downwash caused by most lifting bodies in a moving flow, it is far too simplistic and misses the point that there are pressure changes around a closed body that are key to lift production. I have stated that it is possible to have lift without downwash and provided evidence via a NASA flow simulator. Rracecarr seems to think that Newton's laws state that the aerodynamic forces on a wing are equal in the vertical direction. This cannot be the case as there would then be nothing to counteract weight. I have stated lift opposes weight (in steady straight and level flight)and is a resultant aerodynamic force created by pressure differences. I have also said that downwash is not the main reason for lift. I agree Newton's Laws can be used to estimate lift, not as a consequence of the downward component of downwash, but considering the lifting body as a whole before applying the equations, which eventually lead to pressure changes being responsible for lift. My references agree with this (easiest to look up is the NASA site), I will supply page numbers if nescessary. I continually supply references, Rracecarr continually points toward a single sentence in the lift(force) article. I'm not interested in our personal relationship, I want to see the correct physical description in Wikipedia and I do not think that downward deflection of air is a suitable explanation for lift.Jetstream Rider (talk) 20:15, 23 June 2008 (UTC)
Request for input on Light-wave image
As seen on the talk page: [[1]] there is disagreement about whether the image is a correct represenation or not. Any comments from people here? Sajendra (talk) 01:45, 24 June 2008 (UTC)
- Well, let's first see if everyone agrees with this formula for an electromagnetic wave propagating in the z-direction Count Iblis (talk) 02:27, 24 June 2008 (UTC)
For traveling EM waves in a vacuum, the electric field and the magnetic induction are perpendicular to each other and to the direction of motion, and they are in phase. In other words, the picture is correct as of now. JRSpriggs (talk) 02:40, 24 June 2008 (UTC)
Like I've said replied there (and somewhere else on wikipedia, but I can't remember where), the image is correct. Headbomb {ταλκ – WP Physics: PotW} 02:47, 24 June 2008 (UTC)
- Well the caption is correct on the page linked by Count Iblis but the image on its own could easily be mis-read as suggesting that the wave is going from left to right (e.g. (i) the labelling of the "distance" axis and (ii) there is a sort of convention that illustrations of flow go from left to right (except in Hebrew textbooks, I suppose), unless there is a good reason for another choice. So a better picture would (i) show the direction of motion explicitly and (ii) ideally go from left to right and hence reverse the sign of "M" or "E". PaddyLeahy (talk) 17:01, 25 June 2008 (UTC)
- I agree - the caption describes it correctly as moving from right to left - but the picture could be misinterpreted (based on the distance arrow) as moving from left to right - in which case the orientation of the two fields is incorrect. PhySusie (talk) 17:37, 25 June 2008 (UTC)
Physics template update
See {{physics}} Current features
- Class supported are FA, FL, A, GA, B, C, Start, Stub, List, Template, Category, Disambig, and NA
- Importance supported are Top, High, Mid, Low, NA
- FA, FL, A, GA, B, C, Start, Stub, List, Template, Category, Disambig, and NA now all have their own Class categories
- Top, High, Mid, Low, and NA all have their own Importance categories
- Unassessed articles (articles with no class ratings) are automatically added to Category:Unassessed physics articles
- Unrated articles (articles with no importance ratings) are automatically added to Category:Unknown-importance physics articles
Please review the documentation to see what exactly is different. Headbomb {ταλκ – WP Physics: PotW} 17:37, 24 June 2008 (UTC)
- See Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics#C-Class for an announcement of class C. JRSpriggs (talk) 18:32, 24 June 2008 (UTC)
- I knew it was in the making, I didn't know it was out yet. Thanks for letting me know. I'll update the banner accordingly. Headbomb {ταλκ – WP Physics: PotW} 18:37, 24 June 2008 (UTC)
New list of participants, please re-add yourselves
I've completely rewritten the List of WikiProject Physics participants as a way to purge all the inactive users on that list. Please re-add yourselves.
I will contact all those who were on the old list to let them know that they've been removed during the next few days, but you are more than welcomed to beat me to it. Headbomb {ταλκ – WP Physics: PotW} 08:44, 25 June 2008 (UTC)
I've contacted everyone on the old list. Headbomb {ταλκ – WP Physics: PotW} 16:23, 25 June 2008 (UTC)
Articles flagged for cleanup
Currently, 2024 articles assigned to this project, or 22.6%, are flagged for cleanup of some sort. (Data as of 18 June 2008.) Are you interested in finding out more? I am offering to generate cleanup to-do lists on a project or work group level. See User:B. Wolterding/Cleanup listings for details. If you want to respond to this canned message, please do so at my user talk page. --B. Wolterding (talk) 12:07, 25 June 2008 (UTC)
Quick help table
I've built a quick help table for the front page. I hope you like it.
Please expand it as you see fit. Headbomb {ταλκ – WP Physics: PotW} 03:44, 26 June 2008 (UTC)
Trying to build "house style" list of symbols
You can help by going here. Headbomb {ταλκ – WP Physics: PotW} 16:56, 26 June 2008 (UTC)
Scientific Measurement Devices
Not really sure where to go with this but I thought this might be a good start. I came across pitot tube expecting to find information regarding the scientific measuring device only to find that it had been hijacked by Wikipedia:WikiProject_Aviation. The article desribes pitot tubes as mainly being a device to measure aircraft speed. There is value to the article, however, the use of pitot tubes in the aviation industry should not be the main thrust of the article (forgive all the puns; they are not intentional). I don't know enough about the topic but pitot tubes used on aircraft are probably specialized enough that they could use their own article. If you read the article and are familiar with how pitot tubes are actually used in many other industries (science, metrology, HVAC, etc.) then you will understand why the article is so misleading.
Anyway, I don't think the Aviation Project is entirely to blame. They are simply trying to complete their work and since a more definitive article was not in place they proceded with what was already established. The thought that comes to mind is: Why isn't this under any other WikiProjects? I tried to see if any projects were claiming Measuring_instrument but apparently it is very new.
So my best guess is that measurement and the devices, methods, and theories of measurement should probably be under Physics. As for the article on pitot tubes, I think both projects would benefit by clearly defining which part of the article to write. The aviation article could talk about the pitot tube as an airplane part while referring to the scientific article for general principles and formulas.
Anyway, is there any chance WP Physics will cover measurement devices and methods?