Talk:Lead-tin yellow

Feb edits

My effort is to make the article in clear English, fluent in chemistry, use modern sources, and keep the emphasis on the pigment. To this end, here are some of my edits:

• 1) "Lead-tin-yellow occurs in two varieties..." The fact remains current, these pigments still exist, so past tense seems inappropriate.
• 2) "...known as "Type I", lead stannate Pb₂SnO₄... When a composition is known, chemists give the composition rather than ambiguous language such as oxides of ... and ... This material has been elucidated by Robin Clark et al. in London. Similarly the mixed silicate.
• 3) These materials are prepared by high T solid state reactions in tube furnace techniques, which involves heating intimate mixtures of the oxides.
• 4) I removed the red-linked names of authors. It is typical not to mention ordinary scholars in articles to maintain the emphasis on the article's subject vs distracting the reader with names. Otherwise we mention everyones names all the time and gum up articles.

So those are some of my reasonings. Happy editing.--Smokefoot (talk) 14:48, 4 February 2018 (UTC)

These are relevant considerations. Allow me to comment on them.

1. Well, they are still there, but mainly in old paintings and ceramics. For a pigment the historical importance of which vastly exceeds its present use, applying the past tense is perhaps more natural. But admittedly, it is a minor point.
2. You stress the need for clear English and I fully agree. But while chemists indeed, and rightfully so, give the composition, which by its standardised and exact expression avoids any ambiguity, we, as an encyclopedia, are also bound to provide some clarity for the poor layman. So, apart from technical precision a few explanatory and more vague remarks are due to make the text a bit more understandable to some readers. Probably, my phrasing was quite imperfect in this respect. I invite you to improve on it!
3. We have come a long way! Of course, at the time techniques were more primitive. I'm not quite sure why a method consisting in mixing two powders and heating them, cannot be correctly described as heating a "powder" mixture. I added it because to that layman mentioned above this will not at all be clear. He might as well assume that molten lead and tin were mixed and burnt afterwards.
4. In general, science is an intersubjective project and a social construct. So, people matter. The identities of those who produced the sources are not irrelevant clutter in the text. Wikipedia basically consists of a set of assertions by others. That makes it paramount not to hide them. If Weasel Words are forbidden, so Weasel Science should be avoided. In this special case, the researchers mentioned were not some nobodies. Richard Jakobi was the director of the Doerner Institute, Hermann Kühn, in my opinion, one of the most pre-eminent scholars in the field of the history of pigments. Furthermore, they had not some distant connection to the subject. The rediscovery was of course crucial to our present awareness of the phenomenon. Kühn invented the very concept of lead-tin-yellow, created the type classification and did most of the historical research. Which again is central to the subject because the pigment is mainly of historical importance!--MWAK (talk) 20:29, 4 February 2018 (UTC)

I changed the text again, trying to make these aspects more explicit.--MWAK (talk) 08:45, 14 February 2018 (UTC)