Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Elements/Archive 10

This is an archive of past discussions on Wikipedia:WikiProject Elements. 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.

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Manual of Style

Hi there

For those who have not been following, the Chemistry MOS has been ratified in its current form (WP:CHEMMOS) by WP:CHEM and WP:CHEMISTRY. I think it would be quite appropriate for the structure of elements articles to be formalized in Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style_(chemistry)/Elements. Especially so in light of recent discussions.

Would WP:ELEMENTS be interested? --Rifleman 82 (talk) 01:37, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

A draft at Wikipedia:Manual of Style (chemistry)/Elements/draft for your consideration. --Rifleman 82 (talk) 01:50, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Elements/Guidelines. Nergaal (talk) 06:15, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Which itself it not set-in-stone. Rifleman - I would prefer to not have our article layout become part of the MOS b/c it is so darn hard to change anything that becomes a part of the MOS. We are just not certain that the recommended layout we have now is really correct for all element articles. --mav (talk) 03:41, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Even at WP:CHEM/CHEMISTRY, our MOS is not set in stone, it's a living document subject to change over time (via the usual editing process here), and to be set aside where necessary. It's up to you if you want to be a part of it; I thought it would be more "complete" with Elements inside. If you do prefer not to, may I suggest that you guys still take a look at it? There are some sections ("nomenclature", "reactions") which may still be of relevance to you. --Rifleman 82 (talk) 04:04, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

I see us eventually doing just that but we are still not certain that the layout we recommend is the best it can be and therefore may change it at any time (syncing between our page here and the MOS then becomes an issue). Also, all too often incomplete and poorly devised ideas become cited and enforced like policy over time. So I'd like to think through our layout a lot more before we make it official. :) The rest of the Chem MOS looks fine to me though (skimmed). --mav (talk) 05:18, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

(reset) The main synching you need will be the "summary" paragraph on the main page (WP:CHEMMOS). Take a look at the *source* of Wikipedia:Manual of Style (chemistry)/Nomenclature to see how it works. --Rifleman 82 (talk) 07:26, 8 March 2009 (UTC) That said, it would be best that your document is stable, before we do anything like that. --Rifleman 82 (talk) 07:26, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Semi-protect requested (and perhaps we need a lot more!)

(Reposted from the Magnesium TALK page, as a topic that needs general RfC):

Vandalism by IP users is getting out of hand on this article and so I've requested semi-protection. --Marc Kupper|talk 07:33, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

It's only averaged about 2 a day and as far as I can see enough folk are reverting. I'll continue to monitor, and feel free to ask again if it gets any worse. --John (talk) 07:58, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

Only two a day is too many! Science editors have better things to do than revert articles which IP schoolkids vandalize daily. Chemical element articles are a good example of articles which should generally be semi-protected. Take a look at hydrogen, helium, and oxygen for examples of nice, clear, evolving sprotected articles. Contrast with the neverending stupidities added every day to carbon, magnesium, and aluminium. As is the usual pattern for non-sprotected US presidents, about half the total edits to the article are IP vandalisms which must be removed. That's also true of the last HISTORY page of THIS article, and I see not a single IP valid contribution there. The whole thing is a waste of time, and a waste of wikipedia resources. In fact, I'm going to repost this section on the TALK page of Wikiproject Elements, as an RfC. Comments, folks? Personally, I'm really tired of it. But we're all affected by it. S B H arris 23:55, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

In general, I would prefer to indef sprotect higher quality articles in order to prevent degradation and only use sprotection on other articles temporarily. Average quality articles should be version controlled (edits by anons and non-confirmed users must be reviewed by auto-confirmed users before they are visible to non-logged-in users), but that feature is not enabled yet. As annoying as IP vandalism is, I would, in general, prefer to keep lower quality articles open to all in the hope that some random passerby (which is how I started editing Wikipedia) improves them and may even become a regular editor. Most of our lower quality articles don't get much traffic, so there will be less vandalism and less of a need to immediately remove any bad edits. Of course, standard protection policy should kick-in whenever higher-than-normal amounts of vandalism or edit wars occur on any article. --mav (talk) 03:16, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Excuse me, but it's not how much "traffic" an element article gets, but what fraction of its edits are IP-vandalisms vs. useful IP edits. All of our element articles are good enough that they get enough traffic to include a lot of IP vandals. There are dysprosium IP-vandals. There are erbium and terbium IP-vandals. Would you like to give me an example of what the HECK you're talking about? S B H arris 23:51, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Was that directed at me? If so, I don't think I deserve to get my head bitten off for expressing my views on sprotection. I only mentioned traffic in passing. My point was that we should be more open the worse an article is and less open the better an article is in order to direct novice edits to where they are needed and can do the most good. Vandalism aside, allowing totally open editing to high quality articles tends to degrade them somewhat into more average articles (thick second law of thermodynamics). Conversely, allowing totally open editing on lower quality articles has been demonstrated (at least in the surveys I've seen) to help improve an article toward a more middling quality. So, IMO, some vandalism due to increased openness is tolerable on lower quality articles but becomes increasingly intolerable for higher quality articles. But again, this is just my opinion and I'm not on a campaign to change policy to codify that. --mav (talk) 02:47, 10 March 2009 (UTC)
Per a request, I'll throw my 2 cents in. Element articles are in a special "category" that draws a lot of students, which are notorious for vandalizing articles. As such, I don't see why they shouldn't be s-protected; to me having to register is a small inconvenience to enhance an article, but a great deterrent for vandals. I realized I'll prolly get burned for saying that, because it partially goes against Wikipedia's policy of open editting, but I feel that our resources of good contributors is so limited that they should be spending their time enhancing articles, not cleaning up after others. I find that approximately half of my times is spend cleaning up or checking for vandalism. Again, that's just my 2 cents. Wizard191 (talk) 00:13, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

I personally don't see a major problem with it, but I would be uncomfortable going through and unilaterally protecting them without discussion. Perhaps a post on WP:AN would be good? J.delanoy ^gabs _adds 00:55, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

I can do that, but isn't it rather a local project decision? We have chemistry people who haven't even bothered to look at the edit histories of these things (see above). We're talking about 120 articles or so (don't make me look to see where they leave off now). It's not like the people at WP:AN particularly care about the issue, so long as you're willing to keep doing the grunt-work for them. Nor are they going to bother to look at the edit history of yttrium only to find that COACH HARJO IS GAY. S B H arris 01:06, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia's existence is based upon random (anonymous) people coming along, making the odd correction or addition, and then staying here for longer. If we take away the ability of people to change things, they won't stay for longer and make the encyclopaedia better. While you say students are notoriously the problem, I think that students make up a massive amount of major contributors. If you take away the most visible targets because of a small amount of vandalism which is very quickly reverted and does zero long-term damage, you remove even the possibility of those intelligent enough to be studying and using these articles actually beginning to contribute. It is this which would result in the long-term degradation of the encyclopedia, as we would be left with few who actually know about those visible targets. I strongly oppose indef semi-protection of articles simply because others consider them complete. If there is a lot of vandalism, they should be considered case-by-case, and temporarily protected if necessary. Two vandalism edits a day is nothing; very easy to revert, and I'm sure that we gain more valuable contributors by leaving them open. – Toon ^(talk) 01:30, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Yet the goal of Wikipedia is to create the biggest and best encyclopedia possible. Back when I started in early 2002 there was an extreme shortage of users, hardly anybody knew about Wikipedia and very few people used it. Back then, extreme openness was needed as a recruitment mechanism and vandalism wasn't a big deal b/c so few people used Wikipedia. Now that Wikipedia is world famous and heavily used, I don't think things like sprotection or flagged revisions will be too much of a barrier for people who want to contribute. At the same time, there are areas of Wikipedia, that, well, suck in a way similar to how the whole encyclopedia sucked when I started. So I'm still in favor of the recruitment argument for openness for those articles. --mav (talk) 03:08, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Protecting these articles is only a quick fix and does not solve the problem. If the IPs are making unconstructive edits, they should be blocked. The amount of vandalism coming out of educational institues is absurd. And if there are students who are actually trying to contribute, then they can create an account at home and use it at their educational institute. Of course, these IPs are most likely already blocked but what i'm saying is that proctecting these articles does not solve the problem.

I don't mean that we shouldn't protect the articles, while I agree that high profile articles should be protected if there is a large amount vandalism, but protecting these articles to prevent possible vandalism is not the answer. We should concentrate on blocking these troublesome IPs instead of stopping all IPs from editing the articles.

I also agree that a large amount of editors come from school IPs. I for one started editing on my schools IP for a while till it was blocked (not my fault, or was it?) then I created an account and have been here since. Jerry teps (talk) 01:50, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

I don't think this issue is exactly unique—some articles get vandalized, some get vandalized more than others, and they vary somewhat in quality. I think our existing protection policy works well enough: we get good anonymous edits as well as vandalism, and I wouldn't want to discourage those. That being said, there are other options besides semi-protection that would be interesting to pursue as a WikiProject, which include flagged protection, patrolled edits, and the abuse filter. Those options could tangibly reduce vandalism while leaving the door open for good-faith anonymous contributors. {{Nihiltres|talk|log}} 02:40, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

In my experience, IP vandals are almost always very infrequent to non-recurring drive-by vandals. So blocking most of them is not effective. It is very frustrating to be a major contributor to an article and have your edits drowned out in a sea of vandalism and reverts of vandalism. All this junk in article histories also makes it much more difficult to find out how an article developed and who added what and when. But I don't support blanket sprotection per my comments above. I think many of these issues will be greatly mitigated once flagged revisions goes on-line. --mav (talk) 03:27, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

My rule of thumb for any decent-sized article (>30kb) is > 1 edit/day by multiple IPs --> semiprotect. Life is too short for this. Mav also has a point. Gets even worse when there are 2 or 3 IPs in quick succession. Casliber (talk · contribs) 03:56, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

I fail to see why special rules for semi-protect are required for articles under the WP Elements tag, versus anywhere else. Surely this discussion has been had before elsewhere, and would be better directed there. User A1 (talk) 05:03, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

For the elements articles the method used in German wiki would be great, because a edit to a elements article would get review within a day and then implemented or deleted, but for now a general semiprotect for the elements would help a lot. I revert a lot and besides some typos and minor wording changes I could not remember a good addition by a IP, so why should we have it?--Stone (talk) 06:14, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

That's a little harsh. IP editors can be constructive (OK, I concede that the majority are not). Equally, registered usership is no guarantee that the editing is constructive. And where do you objectively draw the line between articles that should be semi-protected and those that are open to IP abuse? I am temperamentally in favour of carrots rather than sticks. I have therefore wondered whether the system could be incentivised by using a credits or token system, so that editors start with 5 tokens each, require at least 2 tokens to make an edit, are penalized 1 to 4 tokens for an edit identified as vandalism (depending on warning level). When the level reaches 0 there is an automatic block for 5 days and the token stock is then replenished by one per day up to maximum of 10. ?? Plantsurfer (talk) 10:26, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

As someone who has every element page on his watchlist and is very active in reverting vandalism, I don't think element articles are ones that receive a particularly large amount of vandalism. Although I'm fairly quick to protect pages compared to other admins, and would probably favor protecting all the element pages if it were entirely up to me, I don't think the Wikipedia community will be all that accepting of the idea. If a request were made at WP:RFPP for a page that has the amount of vandalism that an element page gets, it would probably be turned down. -- Ed (Edgar181) 11:34, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Yup, I agree. There's not enough vandalism to warrant a semi protection of these articles. Remember that IPs and occasional contributors can improve an article too. semiprot is way too high a barrier. We would quickly semiprot most of the encyclopedia if we started doing it here. -- lucasbfr ^talk 17:31, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

I have noticed that you have blocked many school IP addresses for vandalism and I thought that it might be a better idea to leave account creation unblocked when blocking school IP addresses. Preventing account creation might deter some students who want to improve Wikipedia from editing. I have also found that most students who vandalise articles only do this for a few minutes at a time during lesson time (according to the contributions list) and give up after their edits have been reverted a few times, so they probably wouldn't go through the hassle of creating new accounts anyway since most of their edits are reverted within 30 seconds. GT5162 (talk) 17:54, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Asked for my opinion as an occasional reverter, I would think that a lot depends on the level of targeting of an article. IP-idiots are a major pain - I strongly feel all schools need a policy on policing the activities of their own students, and that Wikipedia should be more active in contacting the schools concerned to establish a dialog with the responsible teachers. And also that we should be more active in tracking down the IP addresses and identifying the schools - but that is a major hassle when there is so much else to be doing, so it does not get done much. Bottom line - semi-protection would be a good idea, but I really like the idea mentioned above - tokens and penalties. docboat (talk) 13:51, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Being a vandal fighter asked for an opinion, I have to say I haven't really seen much vandalism in this topic compared to most other areas. I don't think mass protection of all element articles is required, nor would the rest of the community support this proposal of effectively shutting off a whole section of Wikipedia, especially when there are thousands of unprotected BLP articles and the like vandalised far more often. I would suggest prehaps semi-protecting just a few articles that have the biggest problem. QueenCake (talk) 19:26, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Like QueenCake I'm a recent changes patroller asked to give an opinion, and I agree with her thoroughly, I have not noticed that elements are vandalised any more then other subjects: clearly Edgar has the most knowledge here as they say they have all the elements on their watchlist, and they say that the pages are not vandalised a huge amount. As for the Idea of tokens and penalties, whilst a nice idea, I don't think anyone is really prepared to get that together are they? What Casliber says about 1 vandalism edit a day = semi-protect is in my book to fewer edit to justify a semi-protect, especially since you are suggesting a indefs. I think the conclusion is try and get semi-protection for a few of the really bad, long term cases for a month or so, but otherwise let the matter drop. As a rule I think Indef-semi's are derogatory to wikipedia articles, as the vandalism that enters can be reverted, but any constructive edits that might have been received are lost. Spitfire^Tally-ho! 20:20, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Being a vandal fighter and recent page patroller as stated above by Queencake I agree with what Queencake has said that vandalism in these pages is less compared to vandalism in other pages.I too would suggest semi-protecting a few articles . I do not support mass protection of all element articles nor would the rest of the Wikipedia would support this proposal of effectively shutting off a whole section of Wikipedia, especially when there are thousands of unprotected BLP articles and the like vandalised far more often andd further Wikipedia is where anyone can edit hence do not feel the community will accept any blanket proposal.Pharaoh of the Wizards (talk) 00:26, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

I agree with Pharaoh of the Wizards above, and I'd go even further: semi-protecting more than a hundred articles just because they're about chemical elements is a WikiPolitical non-starter. Hydrogen has different protection needs from Hafnium or Hassium. I'm afraid we need to get stats and reasoned arguments for each case. Physchim62 (talk) 01:13, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

Hassium (element 108) is so new that it wouldn't be expected to draw many school vandals. But standard elements in texts like hafnium very typically have 25-40% of their edits IP vandalisms, and much more if you count the reversions. I count 14 IP vandalisms in the last 50 on halfnium, which would give it 28%. Roughly half the last page of edits are vandalisms or reversions. Can you find me one of the classic 92 elements where the number of IP-vandalisms+reversions in the last page of edits is less than a third? Would you commit to sprotecting any element in which this number is more than a third? If you're talking about positive vs. negative IP contributions, it's not so much the rate as it is the fraction. In the English wikipedia, this fraction is very bad. I doubt you can find me a classical element for which positive IP additions outweigh negative ones, on en.wiki.

As for the other comments on this, the best is enemy of the good. I'd like to see flagged revisions and sprotection of BLP, too. But we have a simpler proposal before us now. S B H arris 05:26, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

Hrm, it seems to me that measuring the percentage of edits which are vandalism doesn't really make much sense. Consider two articles A and B which have been vandalized at the same rate of X edits/month. A has recently been collaborated upon; it receives "serious" edits at a rate of X + 2 edits/month. B has not been worked on recently, it receives "serious" edits at a rate of X - 2 edits/month. Over time, B will have a much higher percentage of vandalism edits than A even though they are vandalized at the same rate. The real question that should be asked is "What is the vandalism rate X?" or, more generally, "What is the average number of vandalisms per month?" Or, to find a slightly different metric that still gives similar information, "What is the average amount of time between consecutive vandalism edits?" I will try to find analyze this tomorrow when I am not tired.

The other question that should be asked is "How effectively is the vandalism being managed?" for which we must also ask "What is the average amount of time between vandalism and revert?" In the case of hafnium, I sampled the last 500 edits (spanning back to January 2007) and found 43 instances of users reverting due to IP vandalism. The mean time between vandalism and revert was 29 minutes, the median time was 1 minute. The total amount of time that elapsed while the page was "damaged" was ~1230 minutes, or ~20.5 hours. These statistics were somewhat skewed by an outlier of 980 minutes. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 04:31, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

As a dedicated anti - vandal, I would have to say that: I do not think that Element pages are vandalized more (or less) than other page categories. This is not to say that anonymous IP vandalism isn't a widespread problem on WikiPedia as a whole (Boy, is it ever!). Really, IMO those of us who Huggle manage to catch quite a bit of the random vandalism that occurs. Outside of huggle, I don't find vandalism in articles very frequently. Maybe because I mainly read history.. My two cents. 𝕭𝖗𝔦𝔞𝔫𝕶𝔫𝔢𝔷 ^talk 23:19, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

I have watched many element pages for several years now, and I think the vandalism is as expected. Common elements, those encountered by schoolchildren, are among some of the most popular on WP and they are vandalised fairly often; more obscure elements are messed up only rarely. Perhaps we should review the traffic statistics (click on the Hit count header to sort by no. hits), and perhaps select for semiprotection only the 10 or 12 elements with the most traffic? Note: Those stats are from last year, but I don't think the rank will change much. Walkerma (talk) 03:59, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

You'll find a more recent (and comprehensive) listing of the traffic to the elements pages here. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 04:31, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

List of Radioactive Elements

List of Radioactive Elements has been nominated for deletion. 76.66.201.179 (talk) 04:54, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

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Thanks. — Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 08:56, 15 March, 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Elements/Article alerts Nergaal (talk) 16:07, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Chromium

I tried to upgrade the chromium article in the last few days. I will try to finish with the Biological role and the Precautions section soon ( already some hidden text there), but for the first two thirds I would be glad if some native speakers could help me to get it to be brilant pros, which is out of my reach, I think. Thanks.--Stone (talk) 22:33, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

Table of isotopes

I'm building an easily-browsable list of all isotopes articles at ~~User:Headbomb/Sandbox5~~See below. Dunno if this is article material, but it certainly is of interest to this project. Feedback/help is appreciated.Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 00:18, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

Table of nuclides (complete) Nergaal (talk) 03:38, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, but that doesn't tell you whether or not the article exists.Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 00:52, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

Err, yes it does. The subscripted mass numbesr are wikilinked if the articles exist. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 02:52, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

Ah, didn't notice it. Anyway, I've started to build a much more complete list at User:Headbomb/Isotope_tables, which should cover any likely article and redirects (likely as anything present in a list of isotope).Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 03:24, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

Hmm, your tables don't include metastable nuclides such as Technetium-99m… Physchim62 (talk) 08:53, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

That could be fixed easily if the nomenclature is rigourous, i.e. if it's always Element-XXm, then it's trivial to implement. Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 00:42, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

The tables are now complete (minus the metastable states).Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 01:30, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

Meta states implemented. Looks like there are only three articles about metastable isotopes. Tc-99m, Cd-133m, Sn-121m.Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 04:45, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

You've probably noticed, but the lists are now on the project mainpage. Feedback/suggested tweaks are welcomed.Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 01:51, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

Should Iridium-192 be moved to Iridium-192m?

Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 00:49, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

No. I checked against Nudat, and the isotope being spoken about is the ground-state nuclear isomer. I think the original author got mixed up between "metastable" and "radioactive" – I've corrected the article. Physchim62 (talk) 21:21, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

Chemical elements data references

This should probably not be in article space. Template or wikispace is more appropriate methinks.Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 16:53, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

A template placed in the standard references section would be best, IMO. --mav (talk) 22:35, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

Include EC numbers in Element fact boxes

I suggest to include EC number in Element fact boxes, as CAS number is already. I've made a template for this purpose: Template:Elementbox_ec_number. --Eivindgh (talk) 21:29, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

Manganese

The addition of User:Dwmyers in february 2003 is still the major part of the histrory section and for me it looks like a little changed sentence by sentence copy of the book Production of Manganese Ferroalloys page 11, chapter history of mangneses. What is the right action to take if this is a real copy right violation? --Stone (talk) 07:34, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

Well, if it's a good source, I guess we could just delete the offending content and rewrite it. If we start from scratch, we'll be less likely to end up with something that too closely resembles the source. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 15:56, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

The same I would suggest. I will try to rewrite the stuff.--Stone (talk) 17:21, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

Template:Chemical Element Isotope

Take a look and feel free to debug it. With this all the isotope articles can be tagged, without clogging the stub/start list of articles of the main template. Nergaal (talk) 01:52, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

proposal about infobox templates

at present, in the infobox, the stable isotopes have only natural abundances and the number of neutrons in each isotope. Imo the latter is really redundant, and I believe that for example, having the nuclear spin of the stable isotope (perhaps not only for the stable one) is incredibly more useful for an encyclopedic article. thoughts? Nergaal (talk) 05:27, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

I think this depends on who we want the infobox to appeal to. It seems to me that the isotopes section currently presents information that everyone can understand, though I suppose having the number of neutrons is somewhat redundant given the naming convention for isotopes. Nuclear spin is something most people won't understand, even if they read the article on it. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 16:07, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

But the same thing can be said about the information that is given right now for the radioactive isotopes (or perhaps for half of the infobox). Anyways, IMO the nuclear spin is the second most important thing for a nuclide after the abundance. Nergaal (talk) 17:11, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

Well.... for NMR applications, the spin is pretty important. Something I wish our infoboxes have. --Rifleman 82 (talk) 18:08, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

Well, if both of you think it's important to have, then no objections here. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 03:21, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

gamma boron

Hi I posted something to the Project chemistry talk page and wanted to add it also to this talk page:

Hi, there is something happening at the boron aticle which needs a hand from more experienced admin or a editor, better familiar with the politics. Two groups discovered the new allotroph of boron and now one is accusing the other that he copied from his paper, because he got it previous to publication. This two groups are now plying a little bit with the boron article. Could we use some of the original research things on both groups to calm down the situatiuon? Thanks

The discussion should happen at the Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Chemistry

---Stone (talk) 10:01, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

Started article Allotropes of boron.--Stone (talk) 20:47, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Sporcle

Don't know if you guys have ever heard of Sporcle, but it's a game in which you're given a category and have to name all members of that category as fast as possible. I found one for the periodic table:

http://sporcle.com/games/elements.php

After about 10 tries, I was able to name all 118. Booyah! --Cryptic C62 · Talk 15:34, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Time to replace nav images?

Many different issues have been mentioned with the current set of nav images (wrong/misleading neutron numbers, elements in wrong category/series, misleading crystal structure, almost useless empty shells, etc). The German version of WikiProject Elements, however, long ago abandoned nav images in favor of a small HTML table that highlighted the relevant box representing the element being viewed. I translated that and created a mock-up for discussion here. See below link.

The big benefit I see is that (in addition to having a clickable mini periodic table), we can change the format of the table much more easily; one table to edit vs 118 nav images.

Current format/layout is just for demonstration purposes; we can change it however we like.

http://wiki.riteme.site/w/index.php?title=Zinc&oldid=281977709

Here is the source table:

Tin

Here is a compact version that would allow us to finally put images of elements at the top of the infobox; just to the right or left of the nav table:

Chemical element

So - what does everybody think? --mav (talk) 22:33, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

I like it. I suppose we could use the compact version for elements that can we have good compact images for and then just use the extended version for those without, eh? --Cryptic C62 · Talk 00:38, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

Thanks - but I'd prefer to have one standard format. The element images are, pretty much, already cropped to fit nicely in the Appearance part of element infoboxes. So that alone should not preclude us from choosing a compact version if we decide that is best. I tried to create a mock up of that but failed. Somebody with more experience playing with wikitables will need to do that. --mav (talk) 02:38, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

I'm leery, primarily in that if it broke (e.g. on certain devices), it'd probably break really nastily. The clickability is easily possible using ImageMap, and I've thought several times about adding the functionality. I also don't like the compact layout from a purely aesthetic point of view—it looks cluttered, and that might be compounded by having an element image right beside it. I wonder if the current images can be improved, but I don't have enough data to do this myself. Aside from that, it's neat. :) {{Nihiltres|talk|log}} 01:25, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

We will of course test this to make sure it works on various browsers and platforms. I already created an image map but was not going to implement it until all the current table images get updated. That effort, however, stalled about a third of the way through due to yet more valid complaints about the images. Hence the idea to have a single table to edit vs over a hundred images. A sample nav image map is below. --mav (talk) 02:29, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

{{ElementImageMap

 | symbol=O
 | name=oxygen
 | crystal structure=cubic
 | period=2
 | number=8

}}

I like the German version better since it makes a little underscore appear when you hover over a box. That makes it easier to tell where exactly you are on the table. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 02:39, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

I was looking at the German version and I didn't see that feature. This is one of those inconsistencies I'm talking about. {{Nihiltres|talk|log}} 14:23, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

An idea: Use some images and some tables. If the tables are of constant size, we could effectively duplicate the current images in HTML, while retaining the format of the current images by using some images within the table, e.g. the crystal structure diagrams have only so many variations. While it might involve more images total (depending on what is done for the Lewis diagrams), it would make correcting errors in the compilation much easier, while not sacrificing greatly what's already there. It still has the problems of a table version, but I thought it might be worthwhile to consider. {{Nihiltres|talk|log}} 14:23, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

I support using such a HTML table instead of the present one. But I think we should stick to an in-line table, not the "compact" one suggested above. The element images can stay where they are in the infobox IMO.--Roentgenium111 (talk) 00:12, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

copper

The google sholar search on the sentence A copper pendant was found in what is now northern Iraq that dates to 8700 BC. [1] yields two hits, but I think as the sentence is there since 18:22, 22 October 2002 I think this a copy from wiki. Any suggestions?--Stone (talk) 22:22, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

No good references = cut it out. It is especially useless when considering the sentence which precedes it: "Some estimates of copper's discovery place this event around 9000 BC in the Middle East." Considering this fact, the pendant bit is trivial at best. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 03:57, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

Unblock and then boron topic ban for Aoganov

Read and comment here if you like. --mav (talk) 14:39, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

Plan now enacted and discussion is archived here. --mav (talk) 01:09, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

Oxygen isotopes for deletion

Oxygen-24 , Oxygen-15 , Oxygen-13 - have been nominated for deletion. 70.29.208.129 (talk) 07:14, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

See WP:articles for deletion/Oxygen-24,WP:articles for deletion/Oxygen-15,WP:articles for deletion/Oxygen-13. Are there guidelines for notability of isotopes? A cursory glance of isotopes of oxygen does not tell me why Oxygen-15 was nominated when Oxygen-17 was not. Oxygen-17 is stable, but to me stability does not equal notability. Plus, there is an Oxygen-16 article as well. Oxygen-16 is by far the dominant isotope, but in my mind that makes it less notable by itself since normal oxygen is essentially oxygen-16. TStein (talk) 17:04, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

Oops, Oxygen-16 is notable but only in nuclear physics as a doubly magic nucleus. But does this make it an exception that proves the rule? TStein (talk) 17:09, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

I would say that stability or unstability does not confer notability, for some elements, radioactivity is more notable that stability for semi-common isotopes. 70.29.208.129 (talk) 06:13, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Banner / categories / template suggestion

Alright, I've been tagging some isotopes and there seems to be some confusion with which templates articles should be tagged. Here are certain suggestions (the general idea, the details could differ) which could give the project a lot more structure, with very little effort from your part (<3 bots!):

Only {{WikiProject Elements}} should be used to tag articles, the other templates would be deprecated/deleted/redirected
If the title is of the form Element, then it would be tagged by {{WikiProject Element|element=yes}}, and placed in Category:Element and Category:Chemical elements.
If the title is of the form Element-X or Isotopes of element, then it would be tagged by {{WikiProject Element|isotope=yes}}, and placed in Category:Element.
Isotopes of elements could possibly be tagged as |class=list, and default-sorted as Element, Isotopes of
If these pages are redirects, then {{WikiProject Elements|class=redirect |importance=na}} would be used.
Each Category:Element would be placed in Category:Chemical elements, and tagged by {{WikiProject Elements|class=category|importance=na}}

This would make it very easy to monitor the AfDs/PRODs of specific isotopes, ensure that all isotopes and elements are tagged and properly categorized, as well as reduce the confusion about which template to use. Bots could also create redirects based on the isotope tables (not necessarily all of them). Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 20:17, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

On your third point, shouldn't isotope-related articles also be placed in category:Isotopes vs Category:Chemical elements? Other than that, your plan sounds good and avoids template duplication. Also, we may want to put group and period articles in their own category. I see that some are already in category:Periodic table, which makes sense. --mav (talk) 22:50, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

Yes, it could also be placed in Category:Isotopes or something like that. Perhaps placing them in Category:Isotopes of element, which would itself be placed in Category:Element and Category:Isotope by elements. Aka the tree would be something like:

Category:Chemical elements

Category:Hydrogen

Category:Isotopes of hydrogen (which would contain H-1, H-2, H-3, H-5, ...)

Category:Helium

Category:Isotopes of helium (which would contain He-2, He-3, He-4, He-5, ...)

Category:Lithium

Category:Isotopes of lithium (which would contain Li-3, Li-4, Li-5, Li-6, ...)

etc...

Category:Isotopes

Category:Isotopes by element

Category:Isotopes of hydrogen (which would contain H-1, H-2, H-3, H-5, ...)
Category:Isotopes of helium (which would contain He-2, He-3, He-4, He-5, ...)
Category:Isotopes of lithium (which would contain Li-3, Li-4, Li-5, Li-6, ...)
etc...

Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 23:08, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

That seems most logical. --mav (talk) 02:12, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Head, feel free to expand the Chemical Element template. There has been some discussion a while ago how to do this and your way would probably be the best. Nergaal (talk) 03:29, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Well if everyone's fine with this, I'll work on it over the week-end and will make the botreq soon after.Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 06:33, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Question

I noticed the old element banner pretty much placed everything in WP0.5. Was this correct/desired behaviour? Should it also do the same for isotope articles? It would probably be much better to have a |WP0.5=yes parameter so WP0.5 doesn't get cluttered with lists, redirects, categories, bad taggings, etc... Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 06:07, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

That sounds like a good idea (although "WP0.5" is a fairly awkward parameter). Nergaal (talk) 06:32, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

In what cases should the wp0.5 be set to |wp0.5=yes ? Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 06:43, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Actually, it would be better if the bot simply placed {{v0.5}} on the relevant articles instead of having an internal parameter. If there are too many banners, the {{WPBS}} bannershell can be used instead. Maintenance would be easier, and bots working on WP0.5 articles would also have an easier time. Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 07:10, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

BOTREQ

See WP:BOTREQ#Tagging and categorizing for WikiProject Elements (somewhat complex)

Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 21:11, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Ununbium

Does someone know when/if the IUPAC publishes a decision on the discovery rights for ununbium? After the independent confirmation of Uub by the Swiss in 2008, I don't see why they shouldn't accept the GSI's discovery now. The article ununbium claims the Joint Working Group's report would be published in "early 2009", but gives neither sources nor an exact date.--Roentgenium111 (talk) 13:53, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

You will get an answer from the press release on the webpage of the GSI.-Stone (talk) 18:34, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Discovery of the element with atomic number 112 (IUPAC Technical Report) Nergaal (talk) 20:57, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Thank you. Unfortunately, the GSI link leads to unlinked headlines, but Nergaal's link works.--Roentgenium111 (talk) 22:42, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

A related question: When will the GSI suggest a name for this element? (I just pray they don't want to name it "wixhausium"...) --Roentgenium111 (talk) 19:17, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

Naming rules

Most of the unnamed chemical elements (112-118) have the boilerplate claim

According to IUPAC rules, names used for previous elements that have ultimately not been adopted are not allowed to be proposed for future use.

but none gives a reference. Is this actually true? If so, IUPAC broke its own rule in the element naming controversy by proposing hahnium for element 108 (already proposed and used for 105), among others. --Roentgenium111 (talk) 22:59, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

I do remember reading this somewhere outside of Wikipedia, but I can't remember where. I believe some of the proposed names for the synthetic elements were used again as a compromise since multiple teams reported synthesis of those elements. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 03:47, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

The boilerplate claim is true: International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (2002), "Naming of New Elements (IUPAC Recommendations 2002)" (PDF), Pure Appl. Chem., 74 (5): 787–91. The question of hahnium is specifically addressed, and the name is stated to be unusable for a future element (to avoid confusion in the literature). Element 108 is officially named hassium (from the 2005 Red Book). Physchim62 (talk) 07:33, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the link. However, since the text is titled "IUPAC recommendations", I suppose it is not a strict rule, but only a (strong) recommendation. (As I said, IUPAC did not follow this "rule" themselves in 1997.) Thus, I'll leave the claim (slightly differently worded, with "recommendation" instead of "rules") in the articles. But I think the "lists of disallowed names" in these articles should be deleted (they are not really noteworthy and based on speculation on which country gets the naming rights. We might create an article "List of disallowed names" instead.--Roentgenium111 (talk) 11:57, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

Metastable isotopes/isomers

There are currently no category for them. What should it be named? Metastable isotopes? Metastable isomers?Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 14:09, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

Do they merit their own category? There are not many of them that are notable (although, yes, some, like Tc-99m or possibly Ta-180m, are notable in their own right). "Metastable isomers" would be more correct, but I'd reckon that "metastable isotopes" is more common. Physchim62 (talk) 14:42, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

Well since there are so few (at least with articles), it would (IMO) be practical to have them all categorized, both from the projects perspective and from the reader's perspective. No need to have subcats such as "Metastable isotopes of tantalum" but "Metastable isotopes" could certainly be populated with a few articles (Ca-113m, Tc-99m, Ta-180m, nuclear isomer, ...).Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 15:28, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

Created at Category:Metastable isotopes.Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 07:31, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

There is also nuclear isomers which is a common term, and the one actually wikified. It includes the metastable isomers AND the shape and fission isomers which are always short-lived and thus never metastable. S B H arris 01:21, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

Isotopes redirect creation

Feedback/comments are welcome.Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 02:32, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Alright, all (non-metastable) isotopes found in isotope lists have been created. They are all in the same form; for example Carbon-17 redirects to Isotopes of carbon#Carbon-17. I've also requested for {{isotope-stub}} to be created, so the physics/chemistry bot runs don't tag isotopes with physics/chemistry banners and stubs. Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 23:38, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

Atomic radii

A comment on the talk page of magnesium (which I couldn't answer to my shame) brought me to this conclusion: the atomic radii in all elementboxes are copied from Atomic radii of the elements (data page), which in turn are copied from webelements.com, which in turn are copied from the articles J.C. Slater, J. Chem. Phys. 1964, 41, 3199 ("empirical") and E. Clementi, D.L.Raimondi, and W.P. Reinhardt, J. Chem. Phys. 1967, 47, 1300 ("calculated)". The data are simply wrong and must be replaced. An easy check would be comparing the "metallic radii" and "empirical" radii at Atomic radii of the elements (data page). Checking the Slater's paper reveals that both are defined in the same way, i.e. half interatomic distance in the elemental solid, but the Slater's values are way off the current XRD data. An easy answer to that is that in 196os both the experiment and calculation did not have enough accuracy (not only measurements but also sample preparation). People who know me know that I have little tolerance to such blunders :), especially if they turn out at numerous FA and GA element pages. My intention is to (i) delete calculated radii, as they only mislead the reader and are subject to numerous theoretical assumption; (ii) replace the atomic radii in the elementboxes with proper values, which are just half of nearest-neighbor distances in elemental solids at room temperature. Whenever there are several crystalline forms at room temperature, I suggest taking an averaged value. Materialscientist (talk) 01:49, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

I never much cared for the calculated values either. Is there a good source for better data? --mav (talk) 02:42, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

Sure. Good source for experimental values is "metallic radius" or simply X-ray diffraction data. I do not want to look for better calculated radii (sure they improved since 1967) because I do not see a reason to use them. Materialscientist (talk) 03:24, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

Calculated radii don't really show much if there is a known covalent radius. Nergaal (talk) 04:42, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

I went through the elementboxes and (i) deleted theoretical radii; (ii) replaced "atomic" with "metallic" from Atomic_radii_of_the_elements_(data_page) (reasonably recent ref), a few missing values took from X-ray data; (iii) updated "covalent" radii by values from Covalent_radius (again recent source, from a respectable database); (iv) updated oxidation states; (v) marked three test elementbox pages for quick deletion (Template:Infobox_Fluorine, Template:Infobox_lanthanum and Template:Infobox_rhenium). Yes, whatever can be done there with bots, should be done with bots. Materialscientist (talk) 09:56, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

I recreated the rhenium one. Nergaal (talk) 17:45, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

But aren't we getting ahead of ourselves in asking what we're looking for? Any radius in a bonded solid will be shorter due to the bond itself, and won't be the same sort of thing you'd get in a frozen solid made of inert gas atoms. The latter is as close as we get to any pure atomic radius of a single neutral atom in space. All the rest are corrupted by the shortening action of the bond in which atom finds itself. Carbon has all kinds of "interatomic radii" depending on what allotrope, or even which plane (in graphite) you're talking about! S B H arris 04:12, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

As I understand, chemists like using those radii, because they got used to them, since 30s when Pauling had introduced them. However, they got used to those "imaginary" radii, which are just half of the interatomic bond (i.e. naively assuming spherical electron density and not using any modern quantum calculation methods). Speaking practically, if you look at carbon, you notice that I added 3 radii for sp³, sp² and sp cases; if you look at inert gases, you notice that I deleted most radii, because such solids as Ne, Ar, etc. have no "bonding" (perhaps vdW only), and molecular solids (O2, N2) etc. are again just molecules piled together, i.e. solid interactions are negligible compared to molecular ones. Materialscientist (talk) 04:31, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

Yes, but why did you remove the atomic radius (both measured and calculated) for argon, when this (as measured in the solid form) is the closest measure we have to what an argon atom's size is, if "size" means anything? All the inert gases have the property that when packed in solid form, the distance from one nucleus to another is a good index of what the atom's size is with minimal bonding. For all the rest, we are forced into accepting ionic or covalent radii as some measure of size, knowing that they're distorted, because these things are not "kissing spheres" but squashed spheres. We don't know the size of a hydrogen atom, except by calculation. The internuclear distance is merely twice the radius of the hydrogen molecule, which is severely distorted. You're ASSUMING that "atomic radius" means only radius in bonded atoms, and must be removed for inert elements (which you did)-- but where did you get that assumption? Instead, it's merely radius for an atom in a different sort of state, and because more nearly spherical, perhaps a truer state to speak of a "radius" of. After all, "radii" apply to SPHERES. Ironically, you've removed atomic radii figures from elements (the "noble group") which exist in forms in which the atoms most closely ARE spheres. S B H arris 04:50, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

(i) As I explained above (you don't have to look, I can repeat), the previous values of "atomic radius" were too old and too wrong; I know they were wrong for metals and thus can't trust them for other elements; (ii) We should be careful about the name of a radius. Could you please explain the bonding in solid Ar ? I thought it is van der Waals type and thus keeping "atomic" and "vdW" radii is misleading. I thought that Ar has no other bonding than vdW, but I'm keen to learn. Regards Materialscientist (talk) 10:07, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

You really don't understand the subject, do you? From our article on the subject, "Atomic radius […] is not a precisely defined physical quantity, nor is it constant in all circumstances." There are many ways to define an atomic radius, and each way has its strengths and its drawbacks. The great strength of the values which you have removed from the infoboxes (but which can still be found at atomic radius) is that they allow comparisons between a large proportion of the elements. If you want to list covalent radii you should call them covalent radii; if you want to list metallic radii, you should call them metallic radii. What you can't do is pretend that your values are somehow more correct than another set of values: all depends on the use to which such values are being put.

The example of the noble gases is particularly illustrative. Here we really are dealing with individual spherical atoms: any isolated atom is spherically symmetrical, but chemistry doesn't usually deal in isolated atoms. The radius of the atom can be calculated by looking at the space those atoms take up in the gas phase: the corresponding van der Waals constant for argon is 32.19 cm³/mol, which corresponds to a spherical radius of 234 pm. These were among the first atomic radii to be measured, half a century before Pauling's work, although priority should really go to Loschmidt with his 1865 study of the dimensions of air molecules.

What has happened since the 1960s is not that chemists have come up with ever more accurate values for atomic radii. In fact, the advances in database technology since that time mean that atomic radii are being used less and less, because it is possible to create databases of bond lengths for different types of bond (the values published regularly by the Cambridge Crystallographic Data Centre cover several thousand different bond types), incuding the variability in length for each type of bond. It's still useful to have van der Waals radii some some applications, and the most commonly used set of values comes from Bondi's exhaustive review (1961). Bondi specificaly addressed the question of non-spherical atoms in molecules, before you accuse chemists of naivety. Nobody has been bothered to update his values in nearly fifty years because it is known that they are very dependent on the environment of the atom and on the technique of measurement: ie, we know that they're only approximate, that the naivety would be to pretend to have an exact value. Physchim62 (talk) 10:08, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

Lets go step by steps without calling each other idiots. (i) vdW of Ar is 188pm, not 234pm, is it or is it not ? (ii) the "atomic radii" of the elements listed at elementboxes before I changed them were taken from Atomic radii of the elements (data page) from the column "empiricial" with a reference to J.C. Slater, J. Chem. Phys. 1964, 41, 3199. (iii) That paper by Slater defined atomic radii as half nearest neighbor distance in elemental solid, which is exactly the definition of "metallic" radius. Materialscientist (talk) 10:29, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

But I don't see any "metallic radius" listed for argon, either. Silly as the term is for this very-non-metal. If I were to calculate such a thing naively, I'd take the molar volume for argon as the solid (which has the highest density 1.616 g/cm^3 vs. 1.39 for the liquid) and this comes out 39.94/1.616 = 24.7 cm^3. Then it's not to hard to show that the radius R of any bunch of spheres is given by:

R³ = [3/4Nπ]*f*V where f is the volume packing fraction efficiency (i.e. 0.74 for face-centered cubic in the case of argon solid), N is Avogadro's number, and V is the molar volume. Putting these in gives me 1.93 x 10^-8 cm = 193 pm. Amazing how close this is the the van der Waals radius (is this calculated by using the van der Waals excluded-volume for the molar volume and essentially putting it in for f*V above?) Anyway, at least we could do it this way for the inert gases, using their crystal structures and solids, and I don't see it having been done for argon, and in fact it looks like it was deleted. For metals which have stronger metallic bonds than inert gases, we have to realize that this gives radii which are a bit smaller than they would be if we measured the atoms somehow by their diameters as frozen into an inert gas crystal (hasn't somebody done that?), but yes, the "metallic" radii for the elemental solids are where we should look first. S B H arris 03:09, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Here is what I thought while updating: I have all XRD data for noble gases, which immediately gives the "atomic radius". For argon it is 186 pm, which is same as vdW radius. I backed off and just left one vdW radius. I guess I should copy it into "atomic radius" instead of deleting. If agreed, I'm glad to do that. Regarding ideal gas calculations, I am also amazed they are so close (well, Ar atom is indeed close to a ball), but I would not use those data simply because they are limited to few elements only. As mentioned, a major point of "radii" is to see the atomic trends (BTW, they were grossly distorted due to some accidental blunders around lanthanides in previous elementbox version). Materialscientist (talk) 04:25, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Ironically, I just published a paper on solid xenon in Al matrix. What I can tell is that (i) knowledge on noble gas solids is very limited; (ii) if you put an atom in solid xenon (e.g. through implantation) it diffuses out. Those crystals are very "fluid", we saw dislocations healing themselves during TEM observations. Materialscientist (talk) 04:33, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

I came because I thought you may be having an arugment over definition :) I guess you really have to look at overall objective. If you are trying to convey to a reader who believes in a hard sphere model some idea of parameter values, then you can just go with that. If you want a table of lattice constants( scaled to get interatomic distance ) or bond lengths, you may just as well have different labels for the "radii" or differnt elements- one for noble gasses could even be called a radius, the others may be bond lengths. Trying to make up a definition for an imprecise term will only lead to calling each other idiots as there is no basis for a decision... Alternatively, you could have a huge table of bond lenghts between element X and Y with multiple entries in many cases, blanks in others. Nerdseeksblonde (talk) 13:14, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

I did understand all that before starting the update, and my grumping on "chemists" did not mean any offense whatsoever. I merely wanted to correct the blunder that same definition was (silently) applied to two different radii (metallic and atomic) and because two different sources were used, the values were different (by significant amount) - the difference was (again silently) blamed to different methods, but methods were same .. just blunder .. Second point is that we do need consistent sources for such values. Saying "Atomic radius […] is not a precisely defined physical quantity, nor is it constant in all circumstances.", then provide no clear definition of it, and then print an "exact" value in an every single elementbox is by no means right. We do have consistent sources for covalent and vdW radii, and the only systematic source I see for "atomic" radii is X-ray data. If anyone comes out with a better alternative, I'm happy to discuss that. Materialscientist (talk) 03:46, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

Well, you could also get a consistent breakdown of each "element" into its components of earth,wind,fire, and water but I'm not sure what good it would be. I'm not dissing any particular method, but pointing out issues with model fits where the underlying assumptions aren't right. IF they aren't hard sphere, or composed of earth,wind,fire, and water, then a fit parameter needs to be considered more carefully. What is it you are trying to tell the reader by defining a radius for each element? Thinking about that may help. Further, there is little reason today to just pick one. Size is not an issue and in fact there may be existing tables which are curated more frequently, maybe NIST or CRC has something to which you could just link. NIST maybe a good resource to which to appeal more generally in these issues. Nerdseeksblonde (talk) 20:34, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

Sorry for repeating myself over and over (I won't anymore), but I want to bring my simple message through. I do not want to define radii. I do understand the associated approximations. Radii were defined for 80 years and are used in schools and everywhere, I don't want to tear that apart myself or by anyone. I merely fixed obsolete values and tried to sort out covalency and vdW problems. Materialscientist (talk) 23:11, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

Second try to get from png to svg

I refurbished my svg periodic table and wanted to start a discussion. The used image has been taged with the should be a svg and now I ask vor your oppinion. The nice thing is that everybody is able to modify it with a text editor and upload it. Wide colour changes can be done by simply search and replace options and singel places by searching in the svg for the element name and replace the colour at that place.--Stone (talk) 21:59, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

Nice work. However, we already have a history of changes to the png version that I'd hate to lose if we stopped using the image and it were deleted. That history of changes should be well-documented prior to any switch. Another downside of SVG is the (last time I checked) inability to create image maps with them. Is it possible to code links in SVG? For that matter, couldn't an HTML table work as well? --mav (talk) 00:08, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Actually, the html table idea is not a good one since we would need to have different sized tables for different uses. But I'd still like to know if it is possible to have hyperlinks in svg files. --mav (talk) 01:37, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Visually, I prefer the PNG version, though I realize that can be changed by editing the SVG version. When you first told me about the SVG version, I tried to figure out how to edit/preview it, but failed. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 03:19, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

I think the svg version would look better if it used the bolder colors used in the png version. To edit svg, just download the file and open it in any text editor. It is easier to read if you use a text editor that wraps the text, such as WordPad, Notepad++ or jEdit. --mav (talk) 04:07, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

I put the file into Periodic Table by Quality so everybody can have a look at the source code. If necessary I will write a howto to work with the file. The hyperlinks in the svg I have to have a look. The bolder colours are no problem. I will try to change it, a good help would be to have the exact colour key--Stone (talk)

Links in the svg: This is absolutly no problem in a svg everything can be clickable. BUT wikipedia does not show the svg as svg, but as a converted graphic and the link information does not survive this process. Have a look at the new uploaded version, in the svg (click several times on the image [2]) the hydrogen and the helium are clickable (sorry but I put in relative path not absolute path and therefore it does not work properly.--Stone (talk) 06:58, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Changed the colours and made the links work. [3] (sorry still only in the svg)--Stone (talk) 07:24, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Thulium

Forgive this unnecessary call, but thulium is a rarely visited page. Please vote at Talk:Thulium section "fiction". IMHO, Tanada's reverts are getting impolite; that is why asking third opinion. Materialscientist (talk) 23:50, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

computed covalent radii

This paper would probably make a very good reference for the infoboxes. Nergaal (talk) 04:48, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

Good summary, worth adding to several WP articles. The question is whether or not we should put in the elementboxes those calculated values of covalent radii, when we already have a good list of experimental ones. Previous discussion was somewhat cold to the theoretical values. Materialscientist (talk) 05:11, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

Image in lede section on Copper; the real problem is "Infobox-itis"

Example of a better way to display images in infoboxes.

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I have just reverted the editor (Wizard191) who moved the etched copper image into the alloys subsection. This is a nice picture for the lede inserted by another editor, Alchemist-hp, but unfortunately messed the layout a little. To fix the layout, I put the image in as a left-aligned image, since the infobox is already occupying the right-aligned position. Wizard191 moved it citing MOS:IMAGE. I presume he is referring to Start an article with a right-aligned lead image or infobox. It does not exactly forbid left-aligned images and this seems like a reasonable exception even if it were so. In any case, an image of pure copper is quite inappropriate for the alloys sub-section. SpinningSpark 12:48, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

While not explicitly prohibited, do you think the article would pass an FA-review with it there? I don't think it would. Wizard191 (talk) 14:51, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

I don't know whether it would or not, but in my opinion, our aim should be to improve the article, not to rigidly comply with arbitrary rules. If a rule prevents you from improving or maintaining Wikipedia, ignore it is written into policy and should trump the MoS in any review. Anyway, my main objection to your edit was not to insist that the image is kept in the lede (although imo it is an excellent image for that position), my objection is rather that where you placed it is entirely inappropriate - the image is of pure copper and you placed it in the alloys section. If there is a good reason for not having a left-justified image in the lede, then fine, put it somewhere else. SpinningSpark 17:22, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

I have to say I agree with Spinningspark about the image; I think the current location is the best place for the image as no other section in the article really fits, and it does not at all detract from the lead. The Seeker 4 Talk 17:30, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

If you guys think it's alright there, I'm not going to push the point. While I may not have moved it to the best of places, I feel that a left justified image is "off-putting". This is the first article I've been to that has one, so it feels out of place. Wizard191 (talk) 18:42, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

How about moving it down a para or two but keeping it in the lede? Would that cure the feeling of unease you get when looking at it? SpinningSpark 22:04, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

This may be a general question for WP: PROJECT ELEMENT but what's the problem with having photos of all elements in their leads/ledes? Except for colorless gasses, where the image is funny even in the element-box. The problem here is that we created these elementboxes and they tookover and are now making us write articles other than the way we'd like to. I'd like a nice photo of the subject up front in any article about a physical THING or PERSON and elements are no exception. The element box photo is often perfectly usable, but too small. It would be a much more attractive wiki for most elements if there was a 150 px one. And (again) since the element-box-of-the-damned is in our way again, that's why people are putting the photo as left-thumbed. Once again, the box is dictating. Why don't we just say: element boxes are fine, but they don't rule? They're not the boss of us? :) S B H arris 22:43, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

Well you've answered your own question, you need to take it to WikiProject Elements, or even higher, have a pop at infoboxes in general at WP:VPP. You may even get some support, not everybody likes them. I recently saw a poor semi-newbie being chased off a bunch of Featured Articles for trying to put in infoboxes on ones that didn't have them. Personally, I think you'd be wasting your time, the're too ingrained in the community now. In any case, I don't think we have a problem with this particular article. The infobox picture is poor quality and would not be suitable for enlargement and the good one we now have in the lede is not suitable for the infobox picture as that is supposed to be the general appearance of the element. Basically it is good as it is now. SpinningSpark 23:24, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

<-- outdent. Okay, I'll copy this section over there, as all the general issues need addressing. Infoboxitis is something that (IMHO) can be dealt with inclusively, by adding infoboxes but making sure they don't replace other good stuff, and they don't end up dictating everything else. They're meant to help, not be fashion-nazis. In this case, where they tend to inhibit addition of a nice photo in the LEAD, they hinder the project. And for the record, I think it's a crying shame that Pussy Galore has been forced into a "James Bond franchise character" infobox. What's this encyclopedia coming to? It's some kind of obscessional madness. S B H arris 23:33, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

Well as I say, in this particular case the infobox is not causing a restriction. The whole problem was caused by trying to strictly apply the rule Thou shalt open the lede with a right-aligned image or infobox. which is a different issue. Nowhere does it say that should be the only picture in the lede, in fact Wikipedia:Layout#Images talks about not having too many in the lede which kind of implies that more than one are expected. SpinningSpark 00:02, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

Ah. Well the layout of this article now is quite nice in my opinion at least, and if it's not against some policy, I'm going to try to add a few aesthetic pics of other elements to the thumb-left of some chem element articles, as we've done here. For everybody reading: take a look at Copper. There are some other elements with a nice photo which could be used to improve them in the same way. S B H arris 00:46, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

just realised you are having to write this out twice. SpinningSpark 09:05, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

You might want to consider my suggestion above of inserting them one paragraph down, that makes it obvious you haven't opened with a left-aligned picture and should get it past the MoS style patrol. SpinningSpark 09:05, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

Sounds good in theory, but as I do it, they don't really look good unless up at the top, as in copper. S B H arris 00:01, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

Wonderful snaps! They "should" be at the top, however, putting them left/lead, with infobox at right, opens the article with a column of text that is too narrow, also straying from the look of most WP articles. For me, it has to do with infoboxes, I think long ones should be made horizontal and dropped towards the bottom of the article (I can dream!). Gwen Gale (talk) 09:58, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

The Element infobox already has a place for an image of the element, in the Appearance field, which is pretty far up in the infobox. If needed, we could even move that field further up in the infobox or redesign the nav image nested table from an inline to standard format, which would make room for an image of the element right next to the nav image. But having a left-aligned image on one side and an infobox on the other, squeezes the text between, esp at lower resolutions. --mav (talk) 22:20, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

Let's just try putting it higher up in the infobox. The box already allows room to make larger images than are usually used there-- for example see manganese where the infobox image alone is close to adequate. I think this problem CAN be solved with infobox alone. It's just that for most elements it hasn't been in the past. S B H arris 02:52, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

How about the example I placed at the top of this section? Of course, a better image is needed, but this is the only one that is horizontally-oriented (which I think we should try to continue to use in the infoboxes). --mav (talk) 19:51, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

Yes, the one at right looks very nice to me. Comments from others welcome, but I wish all infoboxes were fixed up with the improved illustration at right.S B H arris 01:05, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

Note to all: I plan to start seeding infoboxes with a few extra values that will be needed for the updated infobox to work. Protest now if you don't like the updated layout. --mav (talk) 02:44, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

Bot request made to update all the infoboxes so they will be ready once we decide to switch the master template. --mav (talk) 01:30, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

I was hesitant to reprogram the elementbox template myself and would really appreciate if someone does that (Tetracube made good steps in that direction) ! Thing to be done: (i) Currently image is assumed to have .jpg extension (even .JPG is rejected). This is a great impediment; (ii) description of properties is messed up (e.g. crystal structure is by no means atomic property) - "Miscellaneous" and "Crystal structure" should be moved to "Physical properties" (iii) I could never understand why low-mass (say below iron) and heavy (say tungsten) elements use different infobox formatting (iv) There are several "stray" (unused) elementbox pages (i.e. some elements have more than one). I suggest an admin. deletes them. I could provide a list. Materialscientist (talk) 03:20, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

Agreed - the jpg/JPG thing is annoying. Fixing that may require a bot. Matter of fact, the extra values I was going to add could also be done by a bot. Other fixes can be done at any time. Please, feel free to move things around at User:Mav/Sandbox/Elementbox (or create your own sandbox version). The order and organization of the fields certainly could use an update by an expert. In fact, except for the navbox and the isotope area, the order is still pretty close to what I threw together in 2002 as an example for people to comment and improve upon. :) Another thing I'd like to eventually add are emission spectra images (perhaps to the Atomic properties area...). Already have permission from the Kalzium programmers to use their spectra images under the GPL (under the assumption that such images could be copyrighted in the first place). --mav (talk) 03:51, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

I think I can fix the template to take any image extension without the need for a bot. I will sandbox it for you guys to try out first. Materialscientist, if you give me your list of elementboxes that need deleting I will do that for you. SpinningSpark 12:50, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

Having taken a closer look, it is not possible to test for the file extension within the template because many of the images are on Commons and cannot be tested locally. SpinningSpark 18:38, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

We already got rid of the redundant boxes. As to image extension, can't you just take any possible image ? The situation is that elementbox takes an image file without extension and assumes it is .jpg. Can this be fixed to recognize that the file is actually .jpeg or .JPG or etc. ? Materialscientist (talk) 04:36, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

That's what I was trying to do, but it is not possible to test for the existence of files (or their extensions) on Commons from within the template. It is easy enough to change the template to allow any image format, but then the extension has to be specified as part of the image name and the difficulty there is that someone (or a bot) will have to go through all the existing templates to add .jpg. What I could do is add a separate field for the file extension and default it to jpg if nothing was entered, which means nothing has to change on existing templates. Would that be satisfatory to you? SpinningSpark 11:57, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

I just went through all elements and would not do that again just to add .jpg :) As I understand your solution, entering either x or x.jpg will put file x.jpg into the box, but inputing x.jpeg would place x.jpeg. This is fine. One note is that two types of infoboxes are being used for elements. Can you do that for both ? Materialscientist (talk) 12:17, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

Not quite, the solution you describe is the one I can't do. What I was proposing is, for instance for an image called file:name.ext, in the "image name" field name is entered and in the "image ext" field ext is entered. If "image ext" is left blank then jpg is assumed as at present. Should be able to do that for both infoboxes, what's the other one called? Also, there is a field called image name 2, does this serve any purpose? I have tried using this field in sandbox and it just seems to make a mess of the infobox. I suspect this is some old unused code that has become broken over the years and should be removed. If it is still used, can you point me to an example article? SpinningSpark 12:39, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

~~I added a line to the bot request to add |image ext=.jpg to each infobox. That should prepare things for your mods to the master template.~~ Please add to the bot request about anything else that should be removed or added. I don't think image 2 is used for anything anymore. IMO, if we want more than one image, we should create a montage and upload/link to that single image. --mav (talk) 01:45, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Since a bot request is already in play, I think it would be cleaner to just have the bot add .jpg to the end of each image name. So I updated the bot request with that. The downside will be broken image links for a few minutes before the bot swaps the master template code. --mav (talk) 03:48, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, I'm getting torn to many pieces and will throw instant replies: (i) No, second image is not used in any elementbox (I went through them this weekend), and IMO it is not needed there; (ii) 2nd image is used in numerous chemboxes and for several reasons it shows up fine there (e.g. we get image of material and its atomic structure - this is redundant for elements, but not for chemicals); (iii) I disagree with montage things because usually only one part is getting updated. Even for me (a microscopist and photographer) it is a nuisance to create a montage. Mav, why did you bot-request dashes in "face centered cubic" ? Common usage is without those, or perhaps "face-centered cubic". Materialscientist (talk) 03:12, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

We can use image 2 for a second image if we can figure out how to make it work with the updated master template. The space to hyphen thing is to make it possible to have direct links to images of crystal structures, which, annoyingly, all have hyphens instead of spaces. But I see your point and will cancel that part of the request and replace it with advice on how to get around this issue. --mav (talk) 03:54, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

What you described sound great. I am only slightly confused by that it seems same to what I said :) Regading "two boxes": look, e.g., at Template:Infobox_boron and Template:Infobox_tungsten. They both formally use same template, but quite different inputs. Also, I had to use a bypass to get to edit tungsten (I start editing boron and than retype tungsten in the url; I thought it is done on purpose that outsiders don't mess with it). Which 2nd box did you mean ? If you meant second image in elementboxes, it has not been used yet, but it is very much used in files using sister template Template:Chembox, thus it might be useful. Materialscientist (talk) 22:37, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

Updated master template now live. However, most elements were never converted over to it. So we now need to focus on that. Additional tweaks to the master template are most welcome. --mav (talk) 03:20, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

As I commented on your talk page, it looks great. Vast improvement for all elements will follow automatically. A question is what happens when putting in jpg fails to size correctly. For example when I use Sodium.jpg in the element box it's way too large, and the box has no "px" function that I can see which you can use to adjust this, as there is in a thumb box. And it's not automatic, as appears with my sodium.jpg problem. So how do we fix this on our own? S B H arris 07:28, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

I think I've reached the limit of my template hacking ability b/c I don't know why values in 'image size' are being ignored. You can add an image in the appearance field as is template:infobox oxygen but I'd really like to avoid vertically-oriented images whenever possible (not really possible with the liquid oxygen image). That can be done with sodium.jpg by downloading it, flipping it on its side and reuploading it with a different file name. --mav (talk) 12:40, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Honestly, I've just noticed that the elementboxes have widened. I take as we should simply replace old ugly low-resolution "33.jpg", etc. images with proper photography. This is easy for most elements, and is partly done. Let me mention the copyright problem: I'm avoiding it either by using my own photos, "us.gov" sites or German WP (a good help in all respect). Flickr unfortunately has too much junk. Any advice how to get over photos such as at this site ? Materialscientist (talk) 23:33, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

I have a new version on the template in sandbox here based on the one Mav made live above. There was some seriously mangled code in the images section. I have made the following fixes:

Heading added to the "Appearance" section (includes images)
Fixed image size parameter to override the default setting
Fixed to allow the second image (where two images are specified I have stacked them vertically)
Added new image size parameter for second image so it can be sized separately
Fixed image caption fields (which were not previously working) so they now display

You can see some examples in my sandbox here. The examples are demonstrating the following:

The Copper template with all the parameters set as in the live article
The Copper template demonstrating a resized image and caption
The Copper template with no images specified
The Copper template with two images specified
The Boron template with all parameters set as in live article (it was mentioned above as particularly problematic)

I have taken no action on the image extension issue as that all seems to be in hand already by Mav and others. Let me know if you want me to make this live. I suggest other people sandbox a few more examples first to check for any major screwups.

SpinningSpark 21:20, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

Great work cleaning things up! :) Yes, please make your version live and continue to improve the template per your new section below. --mav (talk) 15:21, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

My intuition was right telling me not to edit that template :-) I address my questions below to Spinningspark (S) and Mav (M), but welcome cross checking and reaction by everybody:

M1) What do we do with tungsten and alike (I'm pushing up my old question on those two "types" of inputs) ?

S1) Could you please move "Crystal structure" from top of "Atomic properties" to the top of "Miscellaneous"

Then let us consider Phosphorus - one of those elements which have several forms (allotropes). Because this substance is not healthy, someone asked at the Phosphorus talk page to be clear on sublimation temperature of red and white phases. The template did not accept two values. I used some text-based bypass, but user:Tetracube instead hacked the template to show two melting temperatures and explained me how he's done that. Then the template was updated and all that was gone as it seems here (look at Melting and Boiling temperatures, which are now singled). Now questions:

M2) Why changes by Tetracube to the template are gone? What do we do with this problem of elements having several forms? I do believe we should list some basic properties for several allotropes in the elementbox (graphite/diamond, etc).

S2) If we accept those template changes by Tetracube, could you please check his coding, as he himself wasn't sure about that. Materialscientist (talk) 05:00, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

M1) Those need to be converted. I tried to hack a conversion by editing the heading template, but it broke due to free form values in the crystal structure field. Meaning, each infobox will need to be edited to fix the crystal structure part before we go live with the new version of the heading template. But if we are going to have to edit each infobox already, we might as well do a full conversion.

M2) Allotropes: This is a sticky issue due to the fact that values in the crystal structure field are used to link to the crystal structure image. In retrospect, I think it will be much better if we had a separate 'crystal structure image name' field so that 'crystal structure' can do its old (and more important) job of describing nuances when they exit. Once I get back from vacation, I'll see about readding some of the info that I removed or hid to get the images to work.

-- mav (talk) 15:21, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

Arbitrary editing break

I have moved "Crystal structure" as requested in the sandbox version. Tetracube's edits for allotropes seem to have been overwritten by subsequent updates (too many editors working on the same template at the same time I think). I can put them back (I put back boiling point 2 just as an example) but this is quite an awckward layout in my opinion. Can I suggest a better scheme would be something like;

Allotrope A
Parameter 1	Value 1
Parameter 2	Value 2
Parameter 3	Value 3
Allotrope B
Parameter 1	Value 1
Parameter 2	Value 2
Parameter 3	Value 3
Allotrope C
Parameter 1	Value 1
Parameter 2	Value 2
Parameter 3	Value 3

A side advantage of this scheme is the allotrope name can be entered in a separate field so the parameter values can be just numbers, opening up the possibility of automatic K to C to F conversion. It only needs to be decided which parameters need splitting into allotropes and which are common. SpinningSpark 14:20, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

I have now updated the live template with the fixes listed at Template talk:Elementbox#Fixes and as discussed above. I have started working on the "allotrope" issue above in sandbox, please let me know if anything is done to the live template to make sure I don't overwrite it. I am finding more bugs in the template as I work on it so there is probably going to be a second tranche of bug fixes to go in. SpinningSpark 18:30, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

A fresh morning gives better ideas :-) It is hard to say which value should and shouldn't be split up for allotropes (e.g. melting is same for graphite/diamond, but different for phosphorus). Besides, I agree that the template design gets complicated by that. A proposed solution is to kill autoconversion of temperatures. Kelvins are already redundant there. Why ? No need for complex template solutions for individual cases (allotropes are few) - we can fix them by clever text input in one entry, but. Those extra brackets and 2 extra conversion values in "melting point" and "boiling point" hinder all reasonable attempts. After all, we can always input °F and K values manually. The proposal hinges on setting °C as default - no slight to US system; we need to select one, and °C seem the best choice. Materialscientist (talk) 22:43, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

You do not currently have automatic temperature conversion, they are all input manually. Which temperature should be the default, how it is displayed and whether we ought to use automatic conversion are different issues to how we should display allotropes. I suggest putting that to one side for the moment and address the allotrope issue first. At the moment, the template is reading and displaying three density parameters. Phosphorus has inputs for three boiling points and two melting points, but only one is being displayed. This is a bit of a mess and needs to be fixed one way or another, your solution of text entries still requires the template to handle multiple value entries of a parameter which it currently is not doing. I think that either the infobox should give data for one representative allotrope only and deal with the differences to the rest in the text, or it should have the facility to duplicate all physical parameters for the allotrope as necessary. Perhaps this scheme is workable (using boiling point as an example):

boiling point=nnn

is placed under the general heading and

boiling point 1=nnnn

is placed under the allotrope 1 heading. Same for other parameters and allotropes. That's a big increase in the total number of parameters, but no one template is going to use them all and it avoids having to think about which ones to include/not include - it is completely general. I am not able to work on this for a few days, please let me know what you want to do and I will deal with it when I get back. SpinningSpark 06:51, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

I am often inaccurate on details, sorry. Here is what I meant: I would prefer to enter all three temperatures in one input line, e.g., as "(white) XX1 °C <br>(red) XX2 °C <br>(black) XX2 °C ". As far as I remember, the template will not allow such thing and will "demand" Farenheit and Kelvin values to be entered along, which clutter the whole thing. Same for density. Technicality is (i) This will happen for a few elements only, and thus I'm fine to do that manually (ii) You can easily design (I guess :-) a setting so that all previous values for single-allotrope elements will stay as they are. My line above is compatible with current settings (just cut off last °C and assume °C is added as default); and my proposal allows removing all that unnecessary fuss with second and third values in the template. Materialscientist (talk) 07:25, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

That is easy enough to do, and I am certainly willing to do it if you can indicate here that that is the concensus of the project. However, I think you need to consider the effect that would have on existing entries. If you want to write "freeform" into the field in that way, automatic addition of the units (C, K or whatever) will have to be suppressed which will leave all existing templates with a number and no unit. Also, are all parameters which are split by allotrope to have this treatment (there are quite a few: density, vapor pressure, mp, bp, tp, heat of fusion, thermal conductivity and possibly others sneaked in without documentation)? All the existing articles will need to be amended to conform to this method of entry. As I say, I am willing to code it, but my opinion is that it is going to be quite disruptive. I feel you have conflated the allatrope issue with your desire to have °C as the main (or only) temperature unit. That can certainly be done also if you wish, again I will execute it if it is indicated on this page that that is the consensus of the project. SpinningSpark 16:16, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

Second thought: At this stage, I suggest leaving auto addition of °C, K and °F - thus "usual" elements don't have to be changed. The alteration will be for few allotrope elements only; those I'll add myself manually into the "°C line", writing the line so that the auto-end-addition °C will fit. What I'm asking is to tweak the template so that it does not require inputing K and °F to have the °C entry (current setting). Another required tweak is to change the display of multiple temperatures. Currently it is XX K <br> (YY °C, ZZ °F) for 3 entries XX, YY, ZZ of one temperature parameter. Such entry does not seem nice anymore on wider new boxes and it is not compatible with my proposed text tweak (too much clutter). I suggest changing to XX °C; YY K; ZZ °F. You might have a better idea on the separation sign. Density can be left for now (I'm not much worried by its current multi-line look).

The second and separate issue is on having all three values of °C, K and F. Here I am asking the opinion of the project. IMHO, °C is enough for most elements, and kelvins need to be added only for a few gases which boil at low temperatures. Materialscientist (talk) 00:34, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

I think we are finally there. I have modified boiling point and melting point so you can now put in all three of K, C, F, just one, or any combination and the template will do something sensible with them. If you want to just have C, you can have it by just not entering values for K and F, there is no need for any further modification to the template. I have not touched triple point and critical point which are laid out in a different way. I have also modified the phosphorus infobox to show the temperatures as you suggested above. Let me know if that is ok. SpinningSpark 19:08, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

Great. I've checked and slightly updated phosphorus (reshuffled densities; can't find boiling point of black phosphorus though). All this hassle is not in vain, there are other elements with allotropes (tin, sulfur, carbon, etc.). I think the next priority now is to auto-convert "some" elements (actually several dozens, mostly heavy ones) to the new elementbox format. Materialscientist (talk) 07:31, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

Pronunciation

I would like to propose that a row be added to the element infoboxes, underneath the name, where the pronunciation information can be placed. This would help avoid the irregular wrapping issues that can occur with the pronunciation entry in the lead (when the browser is a certain width), and improve the flow of the text. The same technique has been employed with various astronomy infoboxes and it has (IMO at least) worked out well. See, for example: Jupiter, Andromeda (constellation) and Canopus. Thank you for your consideration.—RJH (talk) 16:58, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

Support and while adding this, let's add another column to the isotopes part for spins. Nergaal (talk) 19:49, 9 July 2009 (UTC)
Support both pronunciation and spin entries. Materialscientist (talk) 22:45, 9 July 2009 (UTC)
Seems like a good idea to me. I think this will be especially helpful for entries with multiple spellings/pronunciations (such as aluminium). --Cryptic C62 · Talk 18:25, 10 July 2009 (UTC)
Support adding pronunciation row. --Roentgenium111 (talk) 19:38, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

Periodic table

Periodic table is currently being nominated for the next ChemAID, but I'd like to go ahead and get started soon regardless of whether it gets chosen or not. At the very least, perhaps we should start brainstorming a list of ways to improve the article:

History section needs to be rewritten and referenced.
I'll start with this in the next few days after a library run. I really enjoyed working on History of gamma-ray burst research. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 16:20, 14 July 2009 (UTC)
Expand the section about periodicity
Reorganize and condense material about arrangement. Groups, periods, and blocks are all discussed multiple times
Add information about synthetic/undiscovered elements

--Cryptic C62 · Talk 16:20, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

That is certainly a good start. The article has been in such an embarrassing state for so long that just about any effort would help. --mav (talk) 02:39, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Conflict of interest

The addition to iodine and the addition to selenium from User:Sebastiano venturi are for me a little critical. The person additing the articles is strongly involved in the issue und added several of his own publications. The user researches the Evolution of dietary antioxidants especially the effect of Iodine deficiency on Stomach cancer. All the articles mentioned in the previous sentence have been edited by the user and the publications have been added too.--Stone (talk) 19:31, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

I'm asking here SBHarris and other familiar with biological issues to screen the edits of that user, if possible on other pages too (Stomach cancer, Evolution of dietary antioxidants, List of antioxidants in food, Iodide as an antioxidant, antioxidant, Evolution of dietary antioxidants). I tried to check his refs; they don't seem highly cited, which is suspicious for bio papers. Materialscientist (talk) 03:35, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I've been watching this. Clearly we're going to need a subarticle on biology of iodine (including evolutionary history) and one on epidemiology also. And somebody's latest theory on what iodine does or doesn't do based on cell-biology or epidemiology can't stay in a general article, and is not even very good for a hypothetical review. For example, I just noticed that the article blithely states that the Japenese have no higher incidence of autoimmune thyroid disease, despite high intakes. But this is flatly wrong: they don't call it Hashimoto's thyroiditis for nothing--this was first described in Japan and has a high incidence there, and even higher in coastal areas. We don't know if it's iodine or not, but statement comes from some Journal of Alternative Medicine abstract. These things are not to be trusted. Let us see if we can talk to user:Sebastiano venturi and get him to clean up his references and take out the speculative ones. In any case, all this speculative stuff on iodine and evolution and disease (even though some is quite interesting and may be correct) can't go in the iodine element wiki. S B H arris 05:18, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

query: guidelines for transplutonium elements

I was hoping of working on Rutherfordium a couple of months ago but every time I tried I got stuck on the layout. Since transplutonium elements have clearly different information available to them, in particular little if any applications and biological roles, I think it would be appropriate to create a new set of guidelines for those articles. Any suggestions? Nergaal (talk) 19:04, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

I had similar problems and therefore avoided to work on them. A guideline would be very helpful.--Stone (talk) 20:12, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

When I was working on Francium (not synthetic, but very unstable), I was lucky enough to find some sources that explicitly stated that it was too rare and unstable to have any applications. I doubt that you'd be able to find anything like that for the synthetic elements, so there would be no point in including an applications section. I see that in the Isotopes and nuclear properties section, you've grouped information together by reaction. Perhaps it would instead be better to try to group information together by research team? My only fear is that this scheme would result in redundancy with the History section. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 20:55, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

Let's see:

Discovery and naming
Isotopes
- Hot syntheses
- Cold syntheses
Chemical properties
Postulated properties

what else? Nergaal (talk) 23:17, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

The cut off point is really around fermium, rather than plutonium, as the last element that can be produced by neutron bombardment. The spontaneous fission of heavier fermium isotopes prevents you from going any further by this method. Nevertheless, I was surprised to find (when I actually checked) that there has been chemistry done on rutherfordium (e.g. this). I don't like the idea of including "postulated properties", but otherwise your scheme seems reasonable. Physchim62 (talk) 11:07, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

I would prefer to stick to the structure and content of the natural elements articles as close as is reasonable. As for isotopes: I'd include detailed information only for a very short list of notable isotopes of the element (say, only the first discovered isotope and the longest-lived isotope, and maybe the one most often produced) - the current "Isotopes" chapter in Rutherfordium is much too long IMO. No natural element article includes a detailed list of all their synthetic isotopes with production method, as far as I know. Something like the "Isotopes" section in Gold or Hydrogen looks much better to me.

I agree with Psychim62 not to include "postulated properties" - it's usually boilerplate material like "is expected to behave as the other members of its group". --Roentgenium111 (talk) 21:09, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

I think the example of francium is a good one to go by. At least it has been accepted by "the rest of the community" (or those who intervene at WP:FAC). I remember having a minor spat with Cryptic (I think) about some of the properties of francium, but the overall layout is sensible, as is the weight given to the different sections. Physchim62 (talk) 21:23, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

questions

I have a few questions:

Should we include the refractory metal, light metal and heavy metal (chemistry) articles into the elements project scope?
I only know the definition of Leichtmetalle (light metals) which is density upto 5g/cm3. The light metals article points out that they are light because of the low atomic mass. In the German article Barium is considered to be a Leichtmetall, which is impossible with the definition in the english wiki. Does anybody have a good definition of light metals?--Stone (talk) 12:04, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

I think the more usual term in English would be "non-ferrous metals". Heavy metal exists in English (and not just as a style of music), but "light metal" is not a term I would ever use. Physchim62 (talk) 14:04, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. I will try to add something to the light metals article. In German the word Leichtmetall is used more often.--Stone (talk) 21:21, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

Problem due to Template change

The cleanup listing bot is no longer getting all our articles due to the fact that we now have two Templates the old Chemical Element, for all the article except the elements and isotopes for which the new Template WikiProject Elements. The bot is only dumping results for the old template, reducing the number of articles in the project from 242 in June to 113 in July. I posted a request to the User:B. Wolterding/Cleanup listings and hope he can help.

I wanted to see the improvment in July for theclean up, because it came quite away since march

6 March 234 articles are assigned to this project, of which 99, or 42.3%, are flagged for cleanup.
4 June 242 articles are assigned to this project, of which 42, or 17.4%, are flagged for cleanup.

--Stone (talk) 21:02, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

I would add another issue: the old half of the templates has "references" at the bottom linking to Chemical_elements_data_references. Most infobox values are taken from there and thus removing that line causes confusion. Editors start adding "citation needed" tags. Would it be possible to restore that line? Materialscientist (talk) 01:40, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

Alright I've fixed the problem. The alerts and listings now use the newer {{WP Elements}} template. I've went through the list of things that still linked to {{Chemical Element}} and converted them to {{WP Elements}} and {{Chemistry}} as needed. The alerts will be fully operational as of tomorrow, and the listings will be a bit behind (Bot needs to update, and about 100s or so were not yet converted and will not be listed until the next data dump, which should be in 3-4 weeks from now). Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 17:58, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

History sections in element articles

All of the articles on elements that I have encountered have a section entitled "History", which seems to be misnamed. One would expect a history section to contain information on the history of the element itself (for synthetic elements such a history might be meaningful), but elements don't really have histories per se. Instead, what you find in the history section is primarily information on the discovery of the element and perhaps it use. Might it not be more appropriate to title these sections something along the lines of "Discovery"? Cool3 (talk) 05:03, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

Discovery is much too narrow for the topics usually discussed there. I don't see why anyone would expect from the word "history" anything specific (like "history of the element itself"). I also don't think it is correct to say that elements have no histories per se. Materialscientist (talk) 05:12, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

You are right in that much of the information found within an element's "History" sections pertains primarily to the discovery of that element. There are, however, several articles which contain other historical information: platinum discusses the attempts to create malleable platinum; helium discusses the early extraction and applications of the gas. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 11:16, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

I think the history sections describe – correctly – information about the element that is historical in nature. In a similar way, History of wine describes historical information about a product which is still around today. Physchim62 (talk) 23:17, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

Neutronium isotopes

I'll abide by WikiProject consensus, but I don't really think neutronium is an "element" for the purpose of the project, and so shouldn't have the full infobox links, the article (not yet written) isotopes of neutronium and the categorycategory:isotopes of neutronium, etc. If consensus is that it is an element, I'll withdraw the CfD, but not the merge tags for dineutron and tetraneutron. Hypothetical isotopes shouldn't have articles unless they also have hypothetical properties, IMHO. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 16:33, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

I'm not very favorable to deleting the category isotopes of neutronium, or removing it from the elements categories. I agree that much what is known about neutronium and its isotopes are hypotheticals, but they are noteworthy hypotheticals, with serious research being done to them. Perhaps the articles could be rewritten to make it clearer that they about about the hypothetical properties of these elements (which are non-controversial as far as they are concerned), but this already seems to be quite clear.Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 16:50, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

I don't want to play down the importance of neutronium, but I find it hard to consider it a chemical element. I would call it either a state of matter or a challenge for particle physicists. Perhaps the nearest related example is muonium, which is definitely considered by chemists to be an exotic form of hydrogen, despite its 2 µs half-life: at least you can do basic chemistry with muonium, something which you can't do with "neutronium". Physchim62 (talk) 21:39, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

It's a limitation of language mostly. In French we just call them "élements", not "éléments chimiques". No one would think of doing chemistry with clumps of neutrons (although there is radiochemistry, but that's not really chemistry in the sense implied by the chemical of chemical elements).

You could say that neutronium is sort of "chemically neutral", since it can't chemically react with anything. But that's just me rambling on more than anything else. Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 01:21, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

dude aren't neutron stars made of neutronium? so maybe 'terrestrial conditions', yup, and it's not obvious that you can't build things out of neutrons —Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.107.1.165 (talk) 22:28, 12 September 2009 (UTC)

Request third opinion

To prevent a potential edit war on the article Solid, I am asking the project members to vote here. Thank you. Materialscientist (talk) 01:21, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

Truss (chemistry)

I am going to create this article about the truss, but it really needs a picture. http://www.apsidium.com/element/theory/truss.htm Maybe we should have a Category:Truss elements. Truss elements:

etc.

Attinio (talk) 04:29, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

Is there any legitimate reliable source which uses the term truss element? I am unable to find any acceptance of this term. --Kinu ^t/_c 07:07, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

I found no credible source for Truss element and I would not add the category or the article. The webpage you give as source is neither good nor does it tell what the truss should do in the context of chemistry. Is there a good book on truss elements?--Stone (talk) 07:10, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

Found apsidium. Attinio (talk) 07:12, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

You also appear to have gone through and added all of these so-called truss elements to a category. I have reverted these edits until it can be shown from a reliable source that the creation of such a category would be appropriate. --Kinu ^t/_c 07:13, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

apsidium.com is a website full of creative theories, speculation about non-existent elements, etc. Not a reliable source. --Itub (talk) 17:12, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

Technetium FAR notice

I have nominated Technetium for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Cirt (talk) 23:19, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

New elements

I started to get all the elements which were discovered, but never made it into the PSE. I already created some articles and will try to start more. I have a good list of possible names, but I wanted to have references for the discovery first, so it will take some time. Bohemium, Helvetium, Panchromium , Ilmenium, Pelopium are the first dianium might be the next. A category for those near miss elements would be nice! --Stone (talk) 09:37, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

Other article already exist Ausonium, Didymium, Hesperium, Coronium.--Stone (talk) 09:43, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

Nice. Have you considered merging them all into one article, such as Former names of chemical elements ? I'm afraid individually, they will never grow larger than stubs, but together, this could be a nice historical GA. Materialscientist (talk) 09:47, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

I would like to have seperat articles and a longer article, which will start out as a list to combine everything. The history of the elements is somewhat complicated. There are several destinct groups of discoveries. The pre-Mendeleev's is a bunch of elements later to be found something else or found and forgoten ones. The Mendeleev and Mosley gap search ones which were hunted down because they should go into the gaps of the PSE. The I found a line it must be a new element ones, which are purely spectroscopic and only there because this method was sucessful with helium. The nuclear ones most of this stuff is name controversy and problems in reproducing the experiments. The name for the overall article is hard to find, due to the difference in history of every name!!--Stone (talk) 15:33, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

Sequanium is now available.--Stone (talk) 20:09, 31 August 2009 (UTC) Wasium is now available.--Stone (talk) 18:41, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

Gnomium is now available!! I like it it is one of the cool ones. Secretly hiding in cobalt only influencing the atomic mass, only to save the periodic table of Mendeleev form inconsistencies. Cool theory, but..... --Stone (talk) 21:22, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Austrium and Decipium are now available!! --Stone (talk) 20:32, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

That's cool and all, but could you also add them to their modern name category (aka Ausonium categorized in Category:Neptunium)? Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 13:25, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

I added them to the right categories.--Stone (talk) 17:13, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

Carolinium, Berzelium and Davyum are now available.--Stone (talk) 17:13, 22 September 2009 (UTC) Lucium is now available.--Stone (talk) 18:41, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

Proposed png → svg replacement

Current image on left, proposed replacement on right

Would anyone object if I globally replaced commons:File:Isotopes and half-life 1.PNG with commons:File:Isotopes and half-life.svg? -- BenRG (talk) 15:44, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

Replaced. -- BenRG (talk) 13:34, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

Pageview stats

After a recent request, I added WikiProject Elements to the list of projects to compile monthly pageview stats for. The data is the same used by http://stats.grok.se/en/ but the program is different, and includes the aggregate views from all redirects to each page. The stats are at Wikipedia:WikiProject Elements/Popular pages.

The page will be updated monthly with new data. The edits aren't marked as bot edits, so they will show up in watchlists. You can view more results, request a new project be added to the list, or request a configuration change for this project using the toolserver tool. If you have any comments or suggestions, please let me know. Thanks! Mr.Z-man 02:08, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

Hmm. This will certainly save me a bit of time. Does anyone desparately want me to continue publishing the Elements Report? --Cryptic C62 · Talk 06:11, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

Cool - thanks. This does duplicate much of what Cryptic was doing. Cryptic - I will miss the vital and core icons and the spike info is also very useful. Would be great if you could work work with Mr Z-man to see if at least the core/vital part can be added. :) --mav (talk) 17:39, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

I always liked the periodic tables where you can easy see what is blamish and what is in the showcase! I would be glad to have this.--Stone (talk) 20:35, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Yep - me too. Updating that and the periodic table by quality are really needed. --mav (talk) 22:02, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Alrighty then, the yeas have it! I'll keep publishing the element reports. I'll start working on the August data in the next day or so. --Cryptic C62 · Talk

I made the pageview request for the isotopes taskforce BTW. This way we can more easily identified the in-demand articles, potential expansions and so on. Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 23:39, 12 September 2009 (UTC)

Alrighty, the new edition is done. I'm having problems uploading new versions of the periodic tables. I've posted a notice at the Village Pump. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 18:54, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

The image issue has been resolved, and the new tables have been uploaded. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 20:17, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

Cool - thanks. Periodic table is going to be a bear... Iron may be more fun to work on. --mav (talk) 03:46, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

Ununoctium on the Main page

Here we have another place for some work. The article was promoted January 2008 and no alternative texts for the images are present, and one dab link to unknown exists. The good thing is all the external links work. We have till the 9. October. --Stone (talk) 19:28, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

Fixed alt text and dab link to unknown. Materialscientist (talk) 07:31, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

Electron configurations and images

Just wanting some input/clarification for this request for new electron configuration images for three elements. /Lokal _Profil 23:05, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

Emission Spectra

People here might be interested in my proposal here to standardize our diagrams for emission spectra. —J kasd 00:07, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

Chemistry in its Element

At the request of User:Beetstra, I'm proposing to (re-)include the links the the Royal Society of Chemistry's Chemistry World "Chemistry in its Element" series of podcasts among the external links. Before they were contributions were reverted, they were either at the end of the list of links or among them in alphabetical order. Does anyone have any views on this addition? The original discussion began on User_talk:Grunkhead.

In my opinion, the podcasts often give an additional viewpoint from a professional chemist or science writer on a particular part of the element's history, use, etc. that would not deserve their own section on the Wiki page, but would qualify well as "additional interesting information". The source, the Royal Society of Chemistry, is strong. My links to the RSC are minor: I'm a professional research chemist and member of the RSC. Thus, I wouldn't consider them spam or even a solicitation/advert. Grunkhead (talk) 18:58, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

As reverting editor, I will weigh in as well. I have been listening to the one for Potassium, and found that the text was more about the chemical name etymology than actual information about the element. I would suggest to put a link on List of chemical element name etymologies, or give every element a reference to their own podcast. They do make a good source there.

I don't want to suggest this is spam, or done for promotional purposes, I just feel that these links don't properly follow the external links guideline, failing parts of WP:ELNO (don't tell much which is not told in the document, tell more about etymology than about the subject itself, etc.), and well, we don't have to link to every resource on potassium anyway (something that might already be questionable for the webelements, as that information is also largely already included in the wiki pages). I hope this explains. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 21:00, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

Call me grumpy, but I can hardly think of any chemical element article that needs any external links. I see external links as useful mostly for "official" things. For example, an article about the ACS definitely needs an external link to the official website of the ACS. But there are no official websites for the elements. Sure there are many excellent and interesting websites with information about the elements; in fact too many and it is not our job to list them because we are not a web directory. (Obviously I'm talking only about links in an "External links" section. We should certainly have links in the references section if a website was used as a reference.) --Itub (talk) 19:44, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

I have a bit of experience with science podcasts on other topics. I understand Itub, but probably he also takes without offense that he is too harsh with suspected spam :-). IMO, podcasts are invaluable - they attract teenagers, who love their ipods, to have something new in there, and to download "cool science stuff" to try, and some find it fun. Not only teenagers. But. A sound link is "same" link as others - every one could be relevant or not, this is to be checked by listening. Same with other legitimate WP audio links - many record old, incorrect versions of the article. Thus I do support (non-commercial) podcasts. Even if it just talks about names, it is already a good start - we do explain names, in details, in every elements article, don't we? Some people are fond of names and even go to war for a single IPA letter :-D Materialscientist (talk) 23:50, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

Very bad photo of elemental calcium

The untarnished elemental calcium cannot be told from any other silvery metal. Doesn't anybody have a better shot? Incidentally, the most dramatically different thing about elemental calcium is how it burns: it gives off a magnesium-bright light, but rose-red. It's very pretty, but rarely seen (flares and red fireworks are magnesium metal plus strontium salts).

Incidentally, the strontium metal photo is not all that great, either. S B H arris 07:39, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Done for calcium (not sure the flame color is right). Don't see better pics for strontium for now. Thanks. Materialscientist (talk) 07:52, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Yes, that's much better. If you ever get a chance, ignite some elemental Ca as you would Mg (it's about as difficult, and you'll need a torch). It's very bright, red, and quite lovely. S B H arris 07:56, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Saw the flame on the net. I think we've got some pure Ca, but granules, not easy to make a picture (rod would be better). Materialscientist (talk) 08:12, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Ferroneous

I think it is good for deletion, but I have no time for a proper look! Thanks.--Stone (talk) 00:35, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Mav has already deleted it. Thanks. Materialscientist (talk) 03:37, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks!!--Stone (talk) 08:27, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Lawrencium needs more references

I was shocked to notice today that Lawrencium has a grand total of 2 inline citations, plus a couple of non-inline references. For a non-trivial article of its length, this seems really unacceptable. Help is greatly needed to improve this situation!—Tetracube (talk) 01:18, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

Move group 12 to "Other metals"?

The element category for zinc was recently changed on the wiki from transition metals to post-transition metals. Previous discussion about what element category group 12 should be in resulted in maintaining the status quo of including it in the transition metals b/c it often, but not always, is considered to be part of that category. IUAPC's 2005 Red Book recommendations (on page 51) states pretty much the same thing but the American Chemical Society's Periodic Table does not include group 12 in the transition metals. I think part of the reason that the status quo was kept last time was due to the difficulty of changing all the nav table images. The updated elementbox template (when fully implementated in all element articles) makes it much easier to change things. I'm willing to table this until all element boxes are converted but still wanted to see what everybody thinks we should do. Note that, post-transition metal, by itself, could not be a perfect replacement for our "Other metal" category b/c it does not include aluminium and the post-transition status of mercury is not as clear. But I see no problem with stating that in element boxes (such as in zinc) when appropriate. What say you? --mav (talk) 19:32, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

I agree that this seems like a low priority which means I'm going to ramble. I'm pretty sure that ACS isn't taking a position that's any different or more rigid than IUPAC. Here ACS seemed to want to distinguish between main group elements and transition metals, so they labeled group 12 elements as transition metals. But here they have a nifty flash gizmo that can better reflect overlapping categorizations, so they didn't include group 12 elements as transition metals. Group 12 are just in the "metals" category. But here ACS seems to go back to having group 12 labeled as a transition metal in their low-tech but nevertheless stylish velour beach towel depiction. It all depends on editorial decisions about what can or should be presented to a general audience in a particular format and setting. My preference at Wikipedia for now would be to keep group 12 colored as a transition metal in the periodic table images because coloring these elements as "other metal"s would imply that smart folks who call these elements transition metals are wrong when they are actually using an acceptable IUPAC convention. If Wikipedia gets a nifty gizmo for overlapping categorizations like on that ACS page then we could eliminate the "other metals" category and I'd do what ACS does with transition metals in their flash gizmo. The categorization of zinc in its element box as a post-transition metal might be the most descriptive, specific category in which to place the element. Calling it a transition metal would be less specific and some people would disagree, but according to IUPAC, it would not be incorrect. But I don't think it's worth sacrificing specificity in editorial decisions about the element categories in their element boxes in order to conform with editorial decisions about element categories in the coloring of our periodic table. My personal preference is that it would be good for the Elementbox template to support up to about five different element categories for each element. For example, Palladium belongs to the categories of Noble metals and Platinum metals in addition to Transition metals. The result for zinc would be that Wikipedia would reflect the real contradiction that some smart folks call zinc a post-transition metal and other smart folks call zinc a transition metal. Even though only a dumb folk would call zinc both a transition metal and a post-transition metal, Wikipedia should list both in its elementbox to reflect the differing conventions. Well-written Transition metal and Post-transition metal articles would help to resolve the apparent contradiction. Finally, the Transition metal and Post-transition metal articles should be edited by someone with easy access to this article...which might be me...in a couple weeks...if noone else does it. Flying Jazz (talk) 15:29, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

Fair enough. Pending something better, I just added a {{{series comment}}} parameter to the elmentbox template. Zinc changed back to a transition with a comment just below that saying that it is also considered to be a post-transition. More explanation should be put in a ref note. --mav (talk) 16:50, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

All elementboxes should be converted now. --mav (talk) 02:44, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

the status of mercury is clear i think

then we would have a category with just zinc and cadmium

it's all sort of arbitrary, we could put aluminium on top of scandium just as well, but that's not what people do —Preceding unsigned comment added by 170.170.59.133 (talk) 18:56, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

article ratings

I went through pretty much all the non GA/FA articles we have and I have tried to re-rate them more consistently among them, based on a general view of how well organized, how broad, and how well referenced are they. I have rated a few as A which means that to me it appeared that they are ok organized and pretty much have everything the guidelines require; with a bit of work, they can/may be submitted for GAN. B's are ok articles, but which may for example require a non-stubby chemistry section. C's are missing more than one noticeable section and have only slightly more than 10 refs. Start's are just above stubby and usually have under 10 refs. If anybody cares and wants to change some of the ratings feel free to do so. Nergaal (talk) 04:24, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads-up, mate. Somehow I missed the massive update in the quality log. I'm updating the report and tables right now. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 13:52, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

Pronunciation guides - getting it right

User:Cybercobra has added simple English pronunciation guides to the element articles, alongside the existing IPA ones. He is now insisting that elements ending in -ium are pronounced "ee-um" rather than "i-um". Nobody I know says them that way. It makes me wonder whether these pronunciation guides actually add any value. I don't see any consensus to use them and they seem redundant to the IPA ones. If they are to remain they should be accurate and I suppose that means making them verifiable. Seems a lot of hassle for very little return. Thoughts? --John (talk) 18:37, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

They are pure mechanical translations of the IPA into respelling pronunciation versions via the respelling key. There is no originality involved. Further, they are very helpful to the 95% of readers who don't know wtf IPA is, much less how to use it. Also, please verify for me: You're suggesting the "i" in -ium is pronounced "ih" or "aye"? Again, I encourage you to read the respelling key and/or the IPA for English guide. Perhaps your local dialect/accent is different enough that an alternate IPA pronunciation is necessary? --Cybercobra (talk) 23:47, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

The 'i' in '-ium' endings is pronounced "ih", not "ee". --John (talk) 01:33, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Allow me to prove you wrong then. (all emphasis in the following is mine)

Dictionary.com: Calcium: non-IPA pronunciation "kal-see-uhm", IPA: "kælsiəm"

Help:IPA_for_English's pronunication of IPA "i": the "y" in happy, the "i" in "serious"

WP:RESPELL for IPA /iː/ or /i/: "ee" like in "feet"

Please provide a source that your pronunciation also exists. --Cybercobra (talk) 02:12, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. Please see WP:RS for what we mean on this project by a reliable source. None of these qualifies. --John (talk) 02:58, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

The entry in question is derived from the Random House Dictionary by Random House Inc., a major publisher. Again, I ask for any source whatsoever for your pronunciation. Whether or not you trust the "IPA for English" or respelling key pages is immaterial given the first quoted respelling pronunciation is directly from said dictionary itself and uses the "ee" to which you object. --Cybercobra (talk) 03:28, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Merriam-Webster likewise gives \ˈkal-sē-əm\, and in its key gives: \ē\ as "y" in "easy". --Cybercobra (talk) 03:41, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Which supports my point; it is 'y' as in 'easy' and not 'ea' as in 'easy', as your version suggested. Oh, and you don't need to ping me each time you reply, I have this watchlisted. --John (talk) 03:49, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

I'm not understanding your point; as far as I can tell, both the "y" and the "ea" are pronounced the same. Merriam-Webster agrees: "Pronunciation: \ˈē-zē\". Just for clarification, "ee" in the respellings is pronounced as in "see". --Cybercobra (talk) 03:56, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

That just doesn't make sense to me. Here's a question; when you pronounce "lithium", how do you say the two 'i' sounds, the same or differently? --John (talk) 06:46, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Differently. The first is (not a formal respelling pronunciation) "ih", the second is "ee". Webster's gives "li-thē-əm"; as in WP's respelling pronunciations, "i" denotes for former sound, and "e"s are used for the latter sound. I don't see how the "i" in -ium could be the former sound, which would make the fragment pronounced "ih-um"; it sounds plain awkward doing 2 "vocal-chordy" (don't know the technical term) sounds in a row like that. --Cybercobra (talk) 07:34, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

(outdent) Cambridge gives /ˈlɪθ.i.əm/ , and the pronunciation guide gives the second vowel value as being like the second vowel in 'happy'. So it may indeed be an WP:ENGVAR thing, as you suggest above. My own background is that I am Scottish, a Chemistry teacher for over 20 years, and a qualified English teacher. The -EE- pronunciation guide looks totally wrong to me. Can I ask again, where was the consensus to add all these pron guides in the first place? --John (talk) 16:36, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

I was bold and did not think explicit getting of consensus was necessary as this did not seem controversial; indeed, I added them to nearly all the elements and yours is the first complaint I've encountered. --Cybercobra (talk) 18:28, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

you guys are getting phonemes and phones mixed up —Preceding unsigned comment added by 170.170.59.139 (talk) 22:02, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

The vowel of bit is what's called a checked vowel, meaning it has to be followed by a consonant. Thus, the -ium ending couldn't have /ɪ/. Keep in mind also that our pronunciation guide makes a distinction between /ɪ/, /iː/, and /i/, the latter of which is realized as [ɪ] in some pretty prominent dialects. — Æµ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 00:17, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

So, the respelling guide just needs some tweaking? It currently gives "ee" for both /iː/ and /i/, from which I interpret someone with happy tensing (which includes speakers of American English?) wrote that part of the guide. --Cybercobra (talk) 00:45, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

It would seem as such. Though Happy-tensing is making its way into RP as well, apparantly. — Æµ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 17:41, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

So, is this right John?:
How I'm interpreting John pronounces it:

How I pronounce it (American English/California English):

--Cybercobra (talk) 00:39, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

An official source (1:55) suggests it's e-um: [4]. ;-) - Wolfkeeper 02:13, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

Right, so, can anyone suggest how the other pronunciation should be transcribed? --Cybercobra (talk) 08:31, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

Book-class

I've edited the template so that the project now supports the book-class. (See the Signpost article for details.) I've also created WP:Books/Hydrogen as an example book (took me about 4 minutes, so it's probably not perfect, and some stuff is probably irrelevant, while other is missing) based off Category:Hydrogen and Category:Isotopes of hydrogen.

Easiest way to create books is to enable the "book-creator" (click on "Create a book" on the print/export toolbox on the left), then go to a category like Category:Helium and click on "Add this category to your book"). Give some structure (chapters), and you're pretty much done. (See Help:Books for more.)

Most elements could probably get its own book containing an overview, important reactions, discoveres, isotopes and other things of interests. Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 23:55, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

This appears to be one of the things where bots would be ideal for the job. Could somebody request creation of books for each element, which would either place all the articles linked in the main element article with the template {{main}} or at least where available, the compounts, isotopes and production articles? Nergaal (talk) 18:43, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

If the categories were cleaner it would be possible, right now I'm pretty sure it's gonna be just as much work to clean up after the bots, if not more, than to do it from scratch. Like I said, if you use the "Add this category to you book" from the book-creator, you've done most of the job a bot would have done. Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 21:58, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

OTOH, I could file that request and find a way to half-ass books automatically. It would probably greatly lessen the "writer's block" effect or the "I'll let someone else start" reticence. Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 22:07, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

Caesium collaboration

Does anyone want to start collaborating on caesium? It's an orange article on the File:Periodic table by article value.PNG, it won't be as monumentally difficult as some of our blemish articles, and it may help us later if we push for an Alkali metal FT. Any takers? --Cryptic C62 · Talk 20:34, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

I would help if you like. I have a lot of stuf for history from Bunsen and Kirchhof. The FT will need a Na as GA, a long way ahead.--Stone (talk) 22:24, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

I'm on (haven't even looked at the article :-). Materialscientist (talk) 22:25, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Other than Wikipedia:Books/Alkali Metals, are there other articles of interest? Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 22:29, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

The German article is reviewed to be a exzellenter Artikel (Featured Article) this might be a good point to look for some inspiration what to do with our article.--Stone (talk) 10:34, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

Long term effects of Strontium

Somebody added a few refs to the last paragraph which are about treatment of osteporosis. The last sentence, yet unchanged, in the strontium article is : Their long-term safety and efficacy have never been evaluated on humans using large-scale medical trials This seems strange if you read publications like the following: [ http://www.jbmronline.org/doi/pdf/10.1359/JBMR.050810?cookieSet=1 Long-Term Effect of Strontium Ranelate Treatment on BMD]. I have bad experience with the germanium food additives so I do not want to delete it. A lot of people trust wiki if it comes to food additives. May be somebody knows more than me. --Stone (talk) 18:49, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

Rhenium picture

This stuff is as visually nice as any metal, but the photo we have really looks like the sample was recovered by panning in a stream for rhenium or something. Anybody have a better one? S B H arris 03:06, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Yes, at some point I was thinking to ban that entire set of pictures like File:Re,75.jpg. Any better now? Materialscientist (talk) 03:32, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Beautiful! Yes, I vote to kill any other element pics that bad (unless we have nothing else). S B H arris 23:54, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

There's File:Calcium_unter_Argon_Schutzgasatmosphäre.jpg for Calcium, but the chunks are okay-sized at least. --Cybercobra (talk) 01:03, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Yes, nice image, but I already put it in :-) Materialscientist (talk) 01:07, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Actually, I was being critical of the Calcium image, but only slightly. :) --Cybercobra (talk) 03:03, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Also, is it me, or is Scandium more bronze than silver despite its description/caption? --Cybercobra (talk) 01:05, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Arsenic could really use a better pic. Current one is of dust and has a bad reflection off the glass bottle. --Cybercobra (talk) 03:13, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. Updated arsenic. Scandium is bad - looks like there was wrong color balancing in the camera (reddish background). Don't have a replacement right away. Materialscientist (talk) 03:33, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

beryllium, zirconium, rhodium images updated. Cadmium could use a better image. --Cybercobra (talk) 03:53, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Rhodium is nice, I know about cadmium but don't have an alternative, as for Be, I think previous was a bit better (light color) - not sure though. Materialscientist (talk) 04:02, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

True, however, it was a bit washed out. And I like the element in its "natural" state, but that's just personal. Iodine changed to one bigger crystal. --Cybercobra (talk) 04:15, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

This problem was discussed some time ago when yttrium was featured on the main page. Then, a suggestion came about contacting people from sites like [5] and ask them if they are interested in releasing some images to wikipedia. But as far as I know, nobody got to do it. Nergaal (talk) 21:12, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Actually somebody should check this site in detail. Nergaal (talk) 21:20, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

I have a cadmium rod on my desk. Is there a good way to tke a picture of it? --Stone (talk) 21:46, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Damn, I had a list of 20 or so elements that that website has and we could use, but the previous edit made me lose that list. Some images, like the K one, has oxide and superoxide present, which would go nicely in other sections, such as the chemistry/compounds one. Whoever has the patience to co through the link I gave, go ahead and upload them. The webside even has radium! Nergaal (talk) 22:08, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Nergaal-- in future, don't panic when some cross-edit seems to blank out what you were going to post, due to EDIT CONFLICT. Your own edit is always there somewhere-- just keep scrolling down and you'll see it labeled as: WHAT YOU WROTE. Click, highlight, and save to your browser clipboard your own "wanna-post" response from the end of THAT page, and go back to the main article, hit edit AGAIN, and use the saved text to "paste" in what you were going to originally add. There's no reason to lose anything due to a cross edit anymore on WP, unless your machine actually locks up or you get kicked off the site. S B H arris 23:00, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

I know, but I wasn't paying attention and clicked back and a few other things. Nergaal (talk) 23:52, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

As for photographing your rod, I'd think put it on a neutral background, have it and the photo in landscape orientation, and possibly have the camera a bit off-center from directly overhead so the surface of the flat end can be seen. However, I'm no photographer, I'm just going roughly off how the other photos look. --Cybercobra (talk) 23:29, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Fluorine pic

Fluorine is currently without a picture of it as a gas for its infobox. Can anyone rectify this? --Cybercobra (talk) 11:46, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

The picture of helium (and other gases)

SingingZombie suggested to use pictures of gas discharges for uncolored gases (e.g. He). Thoughts? Materialscientist (talk) 00:43, 27 December 2009 (UTC)

I agree. Photos of empty vials are not really useful. --mav (please help review urgent FAC and FARs) 00:48, 27 December 2009 (UTC)

As you might guess, I liked that idea too and will go bold and start with neon and xenon because their discharge pictures have appropriate color (fee free to amend my edits). That for He is too reddish whereas it should be more yellow - the trouble is lighting tubes often contain admixed gases. Also, emission color depends on the gas density and discharge current. For example, high-pressure Xe and Hg lamps emit white, but that color is "uncharacteristic" of the element, IMO. Materialscientist (talk) 01:33, 27 December 2009 (UTC)

What about Krypton? Solid crystal would probably be better, but I've been unable to locate a pic, so perhaps the "neon" sign pic we have would be best? --Cybercobra (talk) 13:24, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

Yes, but its color is off - should be more yellowish (correct me if I'm wrong). The shape is nice. I was thinking to get a proper image of Kr discharge and fill the File:KrTube.jpg with that color. Materialscientist (talk) 07:19, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

Technetium FAR

The technetium FAR is in FAR limbo right now. Could use some more eyeballs to see if anything else still needs to be done. If not, then please say so on the FAR page. Thanks. :) --mav (please help review urgent FAC and FARs) 15:06, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

Now listed as FARC. Please vote. --mav (please help review urgent FAC and FARs) 02:35, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

BOT

Here's a draft for bot generated books

{{saved book}}
== Elementname ==

===An overview===
;Overview
:[[Elementname]]

;Isotopes
:[[Isotopes of elementname]]
:[[Elementname-X]]
:[[Elementname-X+1]] (all non-redirects of [[Category:Isotopes of elementname]]
:[[Elementname-X+2]]
:... 

;Miscellany
:[[Article 1]]
:[[Article 2]] (All other articles of [[Category:Elementname]])
:[[Article 3]]
:...

[[Category:Wikipedia books|Elementname]]

for Helium and Lithium, this would give the Book:Helium and Book:Lithium.

The bot would then add {{Wikipedia-Books|Elementname}} in Elementname#See also (and create the see also section if necessary) and in Category:Elementname. Then it would tag the talkpage of the book with the WP Elements banner. Comments/Feedback/Suggestion for improving the drafts? Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 21:22, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

Anyone? Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 22:17, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Cool! You may also want to add another section for compounds. Most element articles should have a Category:Elementname compounds. Other than that, looks good as far as the stuff that can be automatically grepped by a bot. --mav (please help review urgent FAC and FARs) 03:04, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

Yeah I thought of that, but take Category:Lithium_compounds for example... not sure we want those 45 compounds (which says nothing of the 15 lithium minerals and 5 organolithium compounds). Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 05:51, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

Good point. Imagine having all articles in the cats and subcats of category:Carbon compounds thrown in... --mav (please help review urgent FAC and FARs) 14:05, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

Alright, BOTREQ. Discussion should continue there. Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 17:22, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

And now Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/SoxBot 22. @harej 20:51, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Valued picture candidates

A large number of our element pictures are probably good to go to wp:VPC. Somebody (preferably the uploader themselves) should probably try to nominate a bunch of them. Nergaal (talk) 17:15, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

can somebody ban/block this guy?

see this. also, whoever has the privileges, should move back the page. Nergaal (talk) 18:16, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

I just noticed that the same guy had moved caesium to cesium on Nov 19, without bothering to check with anybody. It might be wise to keep an eye on this guy since he appears to love moving pages, not only those related to wp:elem. Actually, I am pretty sure one of our admins can revoke this guy's rights to move pages. Nergaal (talk) 16:53, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

User has not edited since the 13th. Block user page does not have an option to block a user from making moves. Go to WP:ANI if you need fast response from an admin. --mav (Urgent FACs/FARs) 20:32, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

This same user also has a history of making large-scale controversial edits without any regard for consensus, and when confronted later on her talk page would simply blank the page without any indication that the issues raised were addressed (in effect following the letter of WP:BLANKING but not the spirit of policy, which is to build consensus and cooperate with other editors).—Tetracube (talk) 20:55, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

All true, but I second Mav here: if and when they resume, please post a message here or at WP:ANI or a talk of an admin who happens to be on-line (myself included). Materialscientist (talk) 22:33, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

Caesium

I am done expanding the article. Asides from cleaning up the intro and the refs, does anybody have any more input before I submit it to GAN/FAC? Nergaal (talk) 03:01, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Template:Infobox <element> - why do these exist?

I noticed the template {{Infobox ununhexium}}, which links only to one namespace article. I don't see how it could ever link to more than one. I note also:

While I have not checked, I assume that such templates exist or are intended to exist for the main article on all notable elements.

Per the guideline Wikipedia:Template namespace, "Templates should not masquerade as article content in the main article namespace; instead, place the text directly into the article."

All these infoboxes appear to be transcluded into one article each. I think that they should be merged into the articles and the individual element templates be deleted. The underlying structure of templates used across all (e.g. ({{Elementbox}}) should of course be retained; reuse of appropriate wikitext is what templates are for.

I value your opinions. --MegaSloth (talk) 23:13, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Sampling the edit history of a few, looks like User:MZMcBride created (most/all?) of them. I've pinged his talkpage, asking him to comment about it here. --Cybercobra (talk) 23:55, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

It used to be a complete mess to click "edit this page." These infoboxes are dozens of lines of code, and the average reader simply wants to edit the lead. The infoboxes also contain direct "edit" links. --MZMcBride (talk) 00:54, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

On the negative side, copying 100+ boxes into element articles is quite some work, which would also clutter the article (those boxes are quite developed, and indeed, getting to the lead would take some time even for me :). Also, keeping infoboxes as a separate class greatly facilitates some update operations. (for example, going through all the boxes and updating a specific field). What is the positive side, in terms of real benefits which we can understand, rather than the rules alone? Materialscientist (talk) 01:11, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Err, I think you're agreeing with me? I moved the code from the articles to individual template pages (for the first X elements) so that the lead would be easier to edit and less frightening to users. Mav finished up my work in September-ish, so that now all of the articles have been transitioned to the same system. --MZMcBride (talk) 19:21, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I'm agreeing with you above and thank you for what you've done then. The comment by PhysChim below is also relevant - the solution in non-standard for WP (perhaps thats why this thread) but it is quite reasonable. Materialscientist (talk) 22:41, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

For two reasons: firstly as expressed above, where edits in the lead could get very confusing, and by accident somebody might have deleted or edit in the wrong place; secondly it has been decided in the past (probably almost 2 years ago) to do this because it greatly reduces the occurrences of vandalism as right now it is not that easy to edit them. Also, changes in the infoboxes are rarely necessary as all the non-radiactive elements have pretty much all they need already, and also, it is pretty easy to keep track of changes. Nergaal (talk) 01:27, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

The part of the guideline you quote generally refers to templates that contain actual article text (i.e. paragraphs, images, a section) rather than more obviously template things like infoboxes; the former are template abuse and are almost always deleted. --Cybercobra (talk) 01:35, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Quite. While I won't say it's standard practice to do this currently, it seemed reasonable in this instance due to the extremely large number of lines of code, the stable element names (versus something like court case infoboxes, which can move), and the stability of the information itself. --MZMcBride (talk) 19:21, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

I think the justification is in the extremely stable nature of the data in the infoboxes, coupled with a small and homogeneous set of articles. The fix simply wouldn't work in most areas of Wikipedia. It wouldn't work in for chemical compounds, for example, because we have too many new pages needing infoboxes and too many disputed data entries. However, it works for the chemical elements, and so I think the fix should be allowed for those articles. Physchim62 (talk) 20:33, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for that, and sorry I've been so long in responding. While I can see some of your reasoning, and don't intend to pursue this any further at the moment, I think you should note that on WP:TfD, the fact that a template is "single-use" (i.e. is only ever going to be transcluded in one place) is frequently used successfully as the sole or main rationale for template deletion. By the way, I believe copying the information into the articles would be a matter of placing "subst:" before the template name inside the curly braces. It might very well be possible to semi-automate it using a tool such as AWB. Certainly I would expect to participate in the effort of making any change like this that I proposed. --MegaSloth (talk) 04:29, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

I opposed moving the tables to the template-space when it was being done but I've grown to like the separation since edits to them can be viewed with a great deal more scrutiny and can be managed/updated more easily. The size of elementboxes are also much larger than a standard infobox, which makes the wikitext at the start of an article a complete mess when the tables are included in the article itself. I believe this is classic example of when WP:IAR comes into play. --mav (Urgent FACs/FARs) 18:12, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

free pics of elements

at http://images-of-elements.com/. Nergaal (talk) 18:25, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

new: Pm, Ra?. Nergaal (talk) 18:27, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

better: B, Mg, Al, Se, Sb, In, Pb, Cd, Hg?, Pt, Lu, Yb, Ho, Tb, Sm, Nd, Pr, Ce, Th. Nergaal (talk) 18:51, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

I went through about 100 of elements and replaced those which looked much better. It is rather questionable that all of them are "better" (e.g., Pt, Hg, B, etc.). Many are already uploaded here. Note that a couple of images at that web site are not free (Th) and that many are just speculations (though the author clearly states that). Materialscientist (talk) 01:26, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Here are my thoughts for each if the images you that aren't updated:

The platinum one I thought is better because it shows a crystal as opposed to a slide (which reflects something that is defiantly not of encyclopedic value).
Agreed and replaced.
The boron picture that we have shows a sample that does not appear homogeneous (oxidation maybe?).
A bit tricky one, as pure sample should be brown, not black, and variation in color might be not only due to chemical, but also structural inhomogeneity (crystal size → light scattering; also various phases have dissimilar bandgaps).
Could you add these comments to the image so in the future other people don't get similarly confused? Nergaal (talk) 05:18, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
The mercury that we have not is pretty, but a large part of the image is taken by somebody's hands and a distracting, nonmonotonous background.
I like that one, despite the hand - not so boring as thermometers which we already have.
The list I put up here was of those elements that have worthwhile pictures (i.e. the Ra one actually shows a clock based on radium).
Added radium pic to the article.
I missed though the note about promethium.
the magnesium and ~~aluminium~~ samples there actually show a shiny metal as opposed to an oxidized surface.
why isn't selenium much better than the one now?
the thorium image I saw that is not free, but if that guy got permission, I don't see why the author would not want to release to wikipedia also.
The bad thing is copyright tag in the picture, cutting which is not a proper way. The author might give permission to that web site only. Materialscientist (talk) 02:09, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
I understand that, but if somebody emails the guy, it is likely that he will be ok with allowing it on wikipedia if he allowed its publication on a relatively minor website. Nergaal (talk)
The problem is we will need not only the permission, but also his agreement to cut the credits from the photo. That website is Ok with keeping that credit, but WP is not. Anyway, I'm thinking about emailing anyway (will check the web for other images). Materialscientist (talk) 05:38, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
antimony now shows a hugely oxidized surface
the lead image now is appropriate for the applications section, and not really for the infobox
lutetium image has a much better focus than the one now
I've updated Lu minutes ago, did you mean the new image?
the terbium one now is significantly oxidized
Agreed - replaced.
the samarium one now even has a reflection from the flashlight used
So as the web-images; quick-removed reflection.Materialscientist (talk) 02:20, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Nergaal (talk) 01:47, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

I find [6] a lot clearer than [7] Nergaal (talk) 05:25, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
Yes, updated that image. Materialscientist (talk) 05:38, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Agreed with most comments and uploaded new images. IMO, old Mg is better though. Materialscientist (talk) 03:29, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Asides from fluorine, hydrogen, noble gases, almost everything past bismuth, what other elements lack an image of an actual sample, or the image is really bad? Nergaal (talk) 05:33, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

I just realized that at least for Ar there is a picture at File:Solid and liquid argon in small graduated cylinder.jpg. Why is the emission one preferred? Nergaal (talk) 05:44, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Well, the former is basically invisible/transparent... --Cybercobra (talk) 05:50, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

It is transparent, not invisible. Would you use this argument for water? Nergaal (talk) 09:50, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

It is a matter of nice picture; if we had something like a pic of flowing liquid nitrogen, then it might be better than a gas discharge. In File:Solid and liquid argon in small graduated cylinder.jpg, the tube and various reflection distract from Ar itself. Materialscientist (talk) 09:57, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Isotopes of hassium

The half-life information is contradictory in Hassium and in Isotopes of hassium; the former is from Lide, D. R., ed. (2005). CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics (86th ed.). Boca Raton, Florida: CRC Press. ISBN 0-8493-0486-5., but those data are from 2002 at best and are hardly up to date. This page is a nice summary, but I can't quickly find the original source. Anybody knows a reliable source for Hs isotope data? Materialscientist (talk) 05:14, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

http://www.nndc.bnl.gov/chart/ Nergaal (talk) 06:21, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

Lots of bad isotope data in Lide. NNDC link Nergaal gives should be a better source. --mav (Urgent FACs/FARs/PRs) 21:22, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

This is also a neat source but unfortunately, it was updated last in 2002. Nergaal (talk) 22:16, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

GSI Hassium] on their page should be the newest data, but I have not found it.--Stone (talk) 08:31, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, for now, I've used the link by Nergaal and it is at least consistent. That lab is reliable. Materialscientist (talk) 08:36, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

http://ie.lbl.gov/ may also be good. Nergaal (talk) 07:58, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

electron shell images in infoboxes

Please see Template talk:Elementbox #Electron shell image unreadable and inaccessible. Nergaal (talk) 06:38, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

Changes to Template:Elementbox

It looks multiple changes have been made to the Elementbox template, including the removal of some rows. (The edit is here.) I left a message here. It would help to understand why this occurred. Thanks.—RJH (talk) 20:09, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

Response on that page. Should be fixed now. --mav (Urgent FACs/FARs/PRs) 00:24, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

GSI announces name change of Copernicium

As this is from dpa and GSI, from IUPAC it would be better, but the birthday of Copernicus seems to be a good day for the announcement anyway, so I think to day is the day.

--Stone (talk) 16:32, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

BBC reporting here. It seems that some editors have gone ahead and started making changes to ununbium. I think we should wait until we get word from the IUPAC itself before we move the page. Agree? Disagree? --Cryptic C62 · Talk 05:27, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

IUPAC finally announced the new name and the article is moved. Materialscientist (talk) 05:53, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

Member of Wikiproject elements

I had a cat tag on my user page saying I'm a member of Wikiproject elements. Somebody removed it. [8] Is there a sign-up sheet I missed? I've certainly done a hell of a lot of work on element-related articles. What, did I forget to pay my $ dues or something? S B H arris 02:01, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

As I understand, user:WOSlinker is a user (not a bot) and they do make mistakes. Thus I would just revert them and not think much about it - it is your userpage after all and I don't see technical issues with that template. Materialscientist (talk) 02:49, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

Looks like it's not the problem I thought. The userbox template had somehow been duplicated and gotten into my category list, where it produced a strange result. Removing it was the right thing to do. I'd thought it was removed from my userbox list, but it wasn't. S B H arris 14:03, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

Caesium - all hands on deck

Caesium is currently at FAC here. Hamiltonstone has pointed out that, in addition to some other sourcing concerns, much of the article closely resembles this USGS document, to point that some paragraphs appear to have been plagiarized. Any help rewriting/resourcing the paragraphs in question would be greatly appreciated. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 18:11, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

The FAC was closed without further discussion! Is this the normal way it works? Consensus or discussion would have been nice. --Stone (talk) 06:05, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

We were trying to do it quickly, in practice for a coup attempt to move the page, over everybody's objections, to cæsium. The lameness of the edit wars there has not been up to standard. S B H arris 06:26, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

FAC was closed as usual - the article hit the bottom of the FAC page without decisive support. This happens often and there is no use fighting that. Usual strategy is to re-polish the article and return to FAC in several weeks (sorry, I was much too passive on this nom). In my experience, the text must be thoroughly polished before submitting, for example a native speaker, not knowing much about the subject going through and questioning every sentence. (Cryptic C62 was rather efficient in that :) Materialscientist (talk) 06:34, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

I recommend copying over the unresolved FAC comments to talk:Caesium and continuing to address them there. Once all resolved a final polish should be done. BTW, simply using PD text is not wrong at all, but it should be properly attributed via inline cites and attribution tags. Any object based on PD text usage after that is done can and should be called out as invalid reasons to object. --mav (Urgent FACs/FARs/PRs) 02:42, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

Formally true, but .. quotes are usually kept when their phrasing is unique in some way; also, excessive use of quotes might be eye catching in scientific articles. Materialscientist (talk) 02:47, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

I personally despise the overuse of quotes; it is disjointed and messy. PD text is free content and can therefore be used pretty much the same as text originally authored by a Wikimedian, we just require a bit more attribution for externally-produced free content to avoid the appearance of plagiarism. --mav (Urgent FACs/FARs/PRs) 03:22, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

Ah, sorry, I misunderstood above PD use and direct quotes. Materialscientist (talk) 03:26, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

Hamiltonstone's primary concern was the USGS plagiarism, but some of the other reviewers (RJHall and Carabinieri) had prose concerns. Once the plagiarism issue reaches a stable fixed state, I'd be happy to go through the article and give it a solid prose review per MatSci's suggestion. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 03:37, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

Native elements

I have just deleted Native element, because it was a cross-namespace redirect from mainspace (see WP:CSD#R2).

However, there is a category Category:Native element minerals (to which I have redirected the newly-created Category:Native element), and it seemed to me that it might be a good idea to have Native element redirect to some article. However, I didn't find a relevant section in the article chemical element and gave up.

If anyone else thinks this is worth bothering with, you may like to create an appropriate redirect or article. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 18:39, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

Thanks! Now I understand what I can do.--Stone (talk) 22:59, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

Ununseptium

Hi there are some rumours that Ununseptium has been discovered. But I can finde only a few blogs which are not a credible source in my eyes. Is there any better source. The pse has been changed already and the ununseptium article too. Please join the disusson at the Talk:Ununseptium page.--Stone (talk) 10:43, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

Major name-switch proposal: isotope (mostly) trading with nuclide

Following the example of stable nuclide, I think it's time to modernize both the the isotope and nuclide articles, by putting most of the modern material (including the chart of nuclides) into the nuclide article, which will be the larger one. We can leave a little history in both places, with the full history of the "isotope" name remaining in the isotope article. But the modern term for nuclear species is "nuclide" and isotope is now a subset word which is more specific and refers properly to just the set of nuclides of a given element. So, as the more limited term, it should be the shorter article. Are there any objections if I (mostly) switch this material around? I'm going to leave a similar tag at the isotope article and perhaps at some chem-related wikiproject TALK pages, as well. S B H arris 02:21, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Sounds reasonable to me. --mav (Urgent FACs/FARs/PRs) 02:51, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

Hmm. I don't seem to be as familiar with the modern terminology as you are, but the difference between "nuclide" and "isotope" does seem to be rather intuitive based on your explanation. Given how much broader "nuclide" is, it certainly makes sense to transfer some of the info from isotope to nuclide, even though "isotope" may be the more commonly recognized term (especially amongst high-school / college chemistry students). I also think that as long as both articles adequately explain the difference between the two terms, you're unlikely to piss anyone off with the info transfer. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 05:40, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/The Periodic Table (Simon Basher book)

Your project's input is solicited. Beyond My Ken (talk) 23:00, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Merge caesium isotope article into main article?

I have proposed at Talk:Caesium-133 that the Caesium-133 article be merged into the Caesium article, but nobody has responded yet. I thought I would mention it here to cast a wider net. I wanted to see if there is some reason for a stub like this to exist when the main article (in my opinion) covers the importance of isotope 133 quite well. CosineKitty (talk) 20:58, 24 March 2010 (UTC)

If anything, it should IMO be merged as a section of Isotopes of caesium. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 18:09, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

Seems to have been merged to Isotopes of caesium now]]. Does anyone want to write anything more about this nuclide? Physchim62 (talk) 19:47, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

Your comments requested

We really need input from other people on the isotope and nuclide talk pages and the possibilities of their merger, transfer of info from one to the other, or continued split with few changes. Please see talk:isotope. S B H arris 18:43, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

GAN for group 4 element

is a joke! The comprehensiveness of the article barely makes it be a B-class article! 76.119.232.42 (talk) 16:29, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

Nah... It is not supposed to be a copy of all of the individual elements pages; it is a summary of the element's properties. --Chemicalinterest (talk) 20:00, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

Two new copper-related articles

Hello Project Element members! I wanted to ask if people would be kind enough to check out two new copper-related articles written by a brand-new contributor, User:Enviromet.

Please feel free to fix the articles up in any way that you may think they need, and please, if you have suggestions about how he is writing the articles, leave him a note on his talk page. Enviromet has several more related articles that he intends to write soon, and I am hoping he can get the kinks ironed out in the first couple of articles so that he will have some idea what to do with the ones that are still in the planning stages. Many thanks, Invertzoo (talk) 21:20, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

It would be helpful if the lists of products usable are alphabetized, but I wouldn't know how to do them. --Chemicalinterest (talk) 19:59, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

Iron, antimony

I improved the iron article. Please give guidelines on how to improve it further (I tried to follow the recommended element page). --Chemicalinterest (talk) 20:07, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

Looks a heck of a lot better than the version I last looked at. Will look more closely this weekend and see if I can help expand the history section. --mav (reviews needed) 01:34, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

I also improved the antimony article. I would like some guidelines on that too. --Chemicalinterest (talk) 16:35, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

Thnaks for the good work with the article! Here are a few points:

The History section ends with 1783 making it look like that nothing important happened since that point. Was antimony ever used for something an now isn't, than it belongs here.
The applications section lacks a references for the Stibnite as medication (This stuff needs very urgent a reference, because it reads like a medical advice) and the Antimony based drugs.
The main application is as flame-proofing compound this should be mentioned more clearly.
The toxicology section needs a little bit more than it acts similar to arsenic.
The lead is to short and it is not summarizing the article.--Stone (talk) 19:37, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

It says the main application is a hardening agent for lead in lead-acid batteries. --Chemicalinterest (talk) 19:56, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

I expanded the precautions section for both toxicology and incompatibles. --Chemicalinterest (talk) 20:06, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

I added its former use as antimony pills.

I have limited access, so I cannot easily find a reference to stibnite as a medication. Thanks for the suggestions. Now for tin... --Chemicalinterest (talk) 20:10, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

Back to antimony for a second (and thanks, btw, for all your work!). I think you're going a bit far in comparing the toxicity of antimony with arsenic: antimony is usually reckoned to be much less toxic. I've got one reference (in French, unfortunately, but from the IPCS so a reliable source) which gives the acute toxic dose as 30–40 mg/kg. I'll have a go at rewriting that section. Physchim62 (talk) 17:30, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

Should the transactinide category be included as an additional color on the periodic table?

Please share your views at the standard table talk page. Flying Jazz (talk) 17:58, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

Opinion needed

User:Gurps npc (and his IP, Special:Contributions/144.211.101.117) recently added a series of changes to the elements articles involving how they are created. The edits appear to be in good faith, but it would help if someone could please review them for accuracy as they are (as yet) unreferenced. Thanks. --Ckatz^chat _spy 17:11, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

I quick-reverted some of them for technical reasons - introducing an unreferenced single-sentence (also too short and abrupt) statement into a GA, but some indeed need a check. Materialscientist (talk) 22:38, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

Merger of period elements

Apparently all of the Period articles (Period 2 element, Period 3 element) other than Period 1 element have been merged into Period (periodic table). I don't remember there ever being consensus for this and I strongly disagree with it. Anyone have any clue what's going on? --Cryptic C62 · Talk 14:53, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

Done by Kwamikagami (I've alerted him to this discussion here) back on April 18. This is the comment I see about it. DMacks (talk) 15:49, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

I had asked somewhere (I forget at this point where) if there were any reason to keep them, and there was no response. I've since been criticized for not merging Period 1 as well. I was tempted to do that, and only held off because it had been rated GA.

Personally, I don't see any point to the articles. Even 1 is not a coherent article: it's just a long summary of two elements which happen to be next to each other in the periodic chart. It might as well be an article "copper and zinc".

In any case, apart from 1 they were so poorly developed as to not warrant being separate articles just for that reason: the same info is now found in the period (periodic table) article, where it is better developed and easier to navigate.

Period 2: there had been a promise to turn it into a real article after a couple days in 2008, but nothing had happened since. Period 3: a stub, no discussion. Periods 4-6: not even stubs, just the definition of 'period' and a mirror of that row in the table. That is, nothing the reader hasn't already seen, and not even much of that. Period 7: a stub, no discussion. These periods are better developed as I've merged them into 'period' then they ever were as separate articles.

Anyway, if anyone wants to pick up on that unfulfilled promise to turn Period 2 into an encyclopedic article, or any of the other ones, there's nothing stopping them, even though I don't get the point of it. — kwami (talk) 19:34, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

Two points: First, silence does not indicate consensus. You asked on the talk page of Period (periodic table), which generated no discussion. Had you brought it up here, someone would have replied. Second, being poorly developed does not mean an article should become a redirect. Does it have the potential to become an article? If yes, keep it as such even if it's not very good. If no, make it a redirect until someone proves you wrong :P --Cryptic C62 · Talk 16:43, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

I agree with C62. Articles restored. --mav (reviews needed) 00:18, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

Lithium in Afganistan

The discovery of a lithium deposit worth trillions or zillions was added to the article. The pegmatite Lithium deposits are known since long time and the USGS Non-Fuel Mineral Resource Assessment of Afghanistan 2007] states that pegmatite deposits are more expensive to mine and therefore the extraction from brine is economically favoured. So where is the relevance of this addition for the article? I will cut back the ting after the media hype is over.--Stone (talk) 14:07, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, I'd leave it a week or two and then silently put it to its death. Afghanistan is not a significant source of lithium, and is unlikely to become so in the near future. Physchim62 (talk) 14:25, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

The two largest producers in the US had no chance against the producers from South America, so why should Afghanistan have a chance? The demand is high but the mines in South America can deliver more than needed.--Stone (talk) 14:54, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

I reverted that once, but media hype is strong, and it is indeed better to wait a bit. My stance is we should document all significant deposits at least for the sake of geology, not just economy, i.e. extraction costs are not a reason for exclusion, but. Politics affects science, and thus I do not trust any newspaper on that right now. USGS should have their final say. Materialscientist (talk) 22:28, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

We should mention all extractable sources but give more space for sources that are either currently being exploited or are economically viable to extract. So far, it sounds like the reserves in Afghanistan are more strategic than practical given current lithium prices. All that could change if more easy to extract sources are exhausted or cut-off from the rest of the world though. A full paragraph for Afghanistan's reserves seems excessive. We should move that para to a more appropriate place such as Mining in Afghanistan or Natural resources in Afghanistan once the news dies down. I see no harm in providing extra info in the element article during the time a lot of people will be looking for it though. --mav (reviews needed) 13:26, 19 June 2010 (UTC)

Featured pictures

Just a quick heads up: There are currently 15 featured pictures of elements. In no particular order:

All are by Alchemist-hp.

In addition, we also have a diagram:

Eight Allotropes of Carbon

All the above are categorized under Wikipedia:Featured pictures/Sciences/Materials science, except for Platinum - which is from a natural source, and thus goes under Wikipedia:Featured pictures/Sciences/Geology.

The following are currently up for FP status, and all seem highly likely to pass.

The gases are by commons:User:Jurii, the metals are again by Alchemist-hp.

If all pass - as seems likely - we will have 24 elements covered by a featured picture, out of about 81 which are practical to photograph (due to radioactivity). Adam Cuerden (talk) 06:23, 8 July 2010 (UTC)

A vote on mass addition of video links

is here. Please participate. Materialscientist (talk) 05:52, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

Proper length of lede/lead in element articles

Yes, the word is spelled properly both ways. It refers to the summary lead-in of WP articles, of course.

The MoS suggests that ledes for longer articles (max length, say 50 to 70 kB) might be as long as 4 paragraphs. Since the paragraphs in ledes tend to be longer, that suggests perhaps 100 word paragraphs (5 sentences of perhaps 20 words each). That gives a lede length of 4 x 100 = 400 words. Or you can think of it as 20 sentences of 20 words, each a bullet point or "gem" telling the twenty things you wish all educated people knew about this element, if they didn't know anything else.

And indeed, for most of the elements of great importance (hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, iron) that's more or less about how long the lede is, now. Good!

The longest lede I've seen so far is helium's, which is nearly 700 words. Given the fact that helium is the second most common element in the universe and has all kinds of uses, it doesn't seem to be overlong.

For some of the other elements, a shorter lede is commensurate with a shorter article. The ledes for rare earth elements tend to be 150-200 words long, which is fine with me.

For other elements, there is some disparity, usually arising from differing editorial philosophies on what a lede should be, and do. I personally think that a lede for a maximally long element article (nitrogen or iodine for example) should be long, and should summarize the article as well as possible and in as much detail, as allowed in the space of 400 words. Presently silicon is 260 words, iodine is 300 words, and nitrogen--- an element of massive importance and considerable complexity and utility-- gets only 200 words of lede. It was once longer, but some editor, for some unknown reason just didn't like it at the size for other comparable element articles. To me, this is annoying. I'm not pointing any fingers (I can't remember who cut it, actually) but this should be discussed. I'd like to expand it to 400 words again, but not if it's going to start fights.

Could we get some consensus here? I'd like to propose ledes of 400 words at least for major elements with maximally long articles. Gold (for example) at 335 words is a bit funny, considering how much has been written and thought about the stuff through the ages.

What say you all? S B H arris 22:31, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

(Thinking loud) after I (re)write an article for DYK, I rewrite the lead too, summarizing there whatever important I find in the article, but I don't feel like having a fixed length of it - some articles are full of essential info, and some are so technical that I try to reduce the summary too. Article length also varies. Speaking of elements, there is a huge difference, say, between gases and lanthanides. Thus I would leave the lead length variable. Number of words depends on the writing style. Materialscientist (talk) 01:07, 19 July 2010 (UTC)

(EC) Having a range of 200 to 400 words, with exceptions that go beyond both extremes, seems reasonable. My rule of thumb is to shoot for 100 words in the lede for every 2000 words in the body of the article with some inflation at the low end and deflation at the high end. But exactly how many words a lede (or article) needs should be primarily dictated by the topic, the interest in it, and amount of important info available about it. Good lede writing is more art than science though. --mav (reviews needed) 01:41, 19 July 2010 (UTC)

Redundant pronunciation

The infobox for each element, already has a section for the pronunciation. In my opinion, the articles will be improved, by removing the redundant pronunciation, from the opening paragraph, which reduce the readability, more than they add to the clarity. RevDan (talk) 21:01, 21 July 2010 (UTC)

Rutherfordium

I've cleaned up most of the article for future GAN/GTC. Anybody else interested in giving me a help to finish it up (cleanup the last section, and reference it a bit better)? Nergaal (talk) 17:34, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

Format of elements articles

It seems likely that this project aims for uniform sectioning for the articles, but I am unsure if this is a matter of consensus. I am in the process of reviewing the chemical content and applications sections of these articles, and in the process have started to re-arrange the sectioning to roughly parallel that in ELEMENTS style guide. At least for most elements, here are the recommended sections:

Characteristics (Physical, then Chemical, then Occurrence, Isotopes)
Compounds and chemistry
History
Production
Applications
Biological role
Precautions

I have already "resectioned" bromine, chlorine, fluorine, and chromium. But before doing more, I wanted to check that for any objections or suggestions.

Agree with this structure, which is already in most element articles. Some just never got enough attention, and in some FAs, the structure might have been intentionally changed to focus on some topic, e.g. history (technetium, as I recall). There might be rare cases when sections were reshuffled only to fit some nice image into its section, given the wide infobox. Materialscientist (talk) 22:33, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

I prefer the recommended order but understand that some people like to put the history section first. So you may get some push-back on that point. --mav (reviews needed) 02:04, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

History as #3 seems a little odd. I'd think it should go right on top or right before precautions. --Rifleman 82 (talk) 03:00, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

Very often, history conveys (or even consists of) early thesis methods, so production then follows naturally out of it. Materialscientist (talk) 03:11, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

I personally think that occurrence and production/synthesis should be adjacent because one often leads to the other too, but I suppose it's hard to pigeonhole these topics. If nobody else opposes what SF has proposed, we can use it as is. --Rifleman 82 (talk) 17:12, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

I found it hard to have a single recipe for all the articles. Starting with the characteristics (other than for the synthetic elements, and some other less-known ones which should start with history) is the best. Inside the characteristics I would put a separate section on the chemistry (general features and stuff like corrosion), and if large enough, I would have a separate section on compounds (right between production and applications). Production appears best right after occurrence (which should be the last of characteristics in this case) unless as pointed above, there are historical issues that need to be presented first (like maybe is the case for iron). Otherwise, history (if not first for minor & synthetic elements, or right before production for stuff like iron and other notable major elements) can go right after applications; biological role should probably be right near precautions (except for vanadium, tungsten, selenium, and other minor biological elements, in which case the section would be short and best put under characteristics right after chemical). Nergaal (talk) 01:09, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

I thought that I might respond to Nergaal's comments since they touch on matters we're all wondering about.

"hard to have a single recipe for all the articles" it appears that the recipe in the elements style guide is broadly useful (for terrestial elements)
"Inside the characteristics ... separate section on the chemistry", here the chemistry focuses on the reactions starting from the element, not compounds per se.

Yep, but for something like the oxidation state +8 for osmium, the very short list of compounds in this rare oxidation state should probably be listed. Nergaal (talk) 05:46, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

"separate section on compounds (right between production and applications)." The challenge is which compounds to include and how to organize them, we dont want long lists. Currently most are organized by oxidation states, which is a chemist's view, followed by special sections, e.g. organic derivatives. Nergaal (talk) 05:46, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

Binary compounds should always be discussed (and they are usually the only ones that have articles); separating them by oxidation state simply works best in most cases. Other than binary compounds, bases and acids (i.e. the element-ATE ions) are usually a must, and usually some of the other notable salts. Since all until now are inorganic compounds, the organic/organometallic compounds tend to fall outside this structure, so a separate subsection is nice. Nergaal (talk) 05:46, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

"Production appears best right after occurrence (which should be the last of characteristics in this case)" great idea.
we can deal with history later. In copper, this section is very, very long.

An indication that is should be split into a separate subarticle? Nergaal (talk) 05:46, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

the bio-aspect I had been putting in a separate paragraph within "occurrence" (i.e. minerals and biology - i.e. cofactors etc) but if we make occurrence more mineral oriented a separate biology section is required.

for completeness, the 20-or-so elements with biological occurence should have a separate (sub)section on the biological role. Nergaal (talk) 05:46, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

For {{main|specialized topic}}, we all agree probably that the section within the element article should be far smaller than the main article, say 10-20%.

In an ideal world sure; in reality, while WP:ELEM has been doing fairly well with the core, element articles, nobody has done much on the subarticles; other than isotopes which were expanded a very, very, very long time ago, nobody has worked significantly on the compounds/history/allotropes/applications/production subarticles (the only exceptions I am aware of are the subarticles created during the FAC-drive/cleanup of oxygen and zinc. So the 10-20% cannot apply. I would be in for say creating/moving the copper history to a separate article, and then gradually chop the less important stuff even if it is only 1/3 of the total information (I have done something like this with the chlorine production, as it looked really bad for a GA, and after creating the subarticle with the complete information, I started reducing the main article details). The subarticle will be hopefully be picked up at some point, while the main article still contains all the important points without dwelling too much. Nergaal (talk) 05:46, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

Maybe we should editing the current MOS for elements and then we can re-edit if there are strong disagreements. --Smokefoot (talk) 04:16, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

Recent Changes for the Project

The RecentChanges button on the WikiProject Elements page only takes into account the changes with in the "Category:Chemical elements". My suggestion would be to use to create a watch list on a subpage and use the RecentChangesLinked to that page to get a Recent Changes page which is adjustable and suites our needs better. I did this for all articles and talk pages on our Elements report: Special:RecentChangesLinked/User:Stone/PSE --Stone (talk) 13:00, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

Sounds good to me. --mav (reviews needed) 19:38, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

In the recent years the number of pages attributed to be the scope of WP Elements went up to over 3000 pages should we have all of them in that list or is it OK only to have the core topics in the list? --Stone (talk) 21:13, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

The fewer, the better people will keep a track of negative changes. Outside the core articles, I don't think we should put too much energy (unless we have enough people to do it). Nergaal (talk) 21:25, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

Nice list, but I think its missing the infobox templates for the elements. (Btw. There is a newly added, but more "time consuming", link to a watch list om the project page: Wikiproject Watchlist - WikiProject Elements Christian75 (talk) 19:21, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

Added the infobox templates. The thing with the list you mention is that it is only the last 25 edits. --Stone (talk) 21:21, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

Isotope stub genocide and bot notice to prevent the situation?

Since these were created by IPs (probably the same person since they all followed the same pattern), I can't notify this guy. However, I don't feel comfortable in having such a large number of edits unreviewed, so I'm coming here.

Most of the isotope stubs I killed were things like this (Lanthanum-139). They consisted basically a bunch of unreferenced numbers, most of which can be found in the isotopes of lanthanum table anyway. So I switched them to the standard redirects (i.e. this). I think we can all agree that these stubs are not very helpful for the reader, so I think it would be nice if we put a notice (as a comment) on the redirects. Something like

<!--
Before converting the Elementname-XXX redirect into an article,
please consider creating a section entitled Elementname-XXX in the [[Isotopes of elementname]] article instead.

See [[Isotopes of hydrogen]] for an example.
-->

Comments? Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 18:16, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

Since I dislike stubs whose info is better presented in a table, I like this idea. --mav (reviews needed) 22:31, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

Good idea! Nergaal (talk) 00:58, 4 September 2010 (UTC)
- You have probably started redirecting everything at Category:Stub-Class chemical element isotope articles; could you please remember to reasses the articles from stub to redirect? Nergaal (talk) 02:14, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

- - See WP:BOTREQ#Isotope_redirects, for the bot request. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 07:54, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Patnaik "Handbook of Inorganic Chemical Compounds" - Authoritative??

I am trying to figure out why this book is so widely cited in Wikipedia. I admit to being sensitized by continuing issues with self-promotion (see messages to User talk:Rbaselt). I have never heard of Patnaik as a scientist nor his book outside of Wikipedia, and it is not cited within the scholarly community of inorganic chemists. Views of its contents are not available on Amazon. So I am extremely suspicious of its authority. I heavily cite Ullmann's Encyclopedia, which is written by experts in areas of their demonstrated expertise and others cite the Rubber Handbook and conventional monographs such as Greenwood & Earnshaw, Holleman & Wiberg, Cotton & Wilkinson. Comments welcome, otherwise I recommend that we investigate the authority of this book and if not satisfied, replace these citations.--Smokefoot (talk) 15:00, 11 September 2010 (UTC)

Somehow I could read this book on Google Books a year ago. My recollections were that it is neither a school book (like Emsley's Elements) nor a rigorous specialist-minded text, but something in between. In general, being a known researcher is not a requirement for a good book writer, thus my vote is "replace if you have a good alternative, especially if it is on-line available, but do not delete without replacement." Materialscientist (talk) 23:45, 11 September 2010 (UTC)

Good advice, I am not going to do anything drastic, but if I find equivalent but more conventional sources, I proposed to replace Patnaik in a stepwise manner.--Smokefoot (talk) 14:44, 12 September 2010 (UTC)

That's what I've been doing. I think Patnaik is an OK source, but we have better: Smokefoot cites Ullmann's because (presumably) he has access to it; I cite the 62nd edition of the Rubber Bible because that's the copy I own! The NIST Chemistry WebBook is another useful source that all of us have access to, and the monographs that Smokefoot cites are, of course, vital for this project. Physchim62 (talk) 01:55, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

Assessment

I will go through the ratings of the articles (elements only) today to make them more consistent. Also some notes about GANning some current Bs:

arsenic - a bit of cleanup needed
beryllium - needs toxicity
californium - is ready; gogo Mav!
carbon - close if somebody expanded history and application and referenced it a bit better
cobalt - needs only a little more work
copper - could be pushed with work on refs and applications
gallium - some cleanup and reffing
gold - is well developed but needs cleanup and some extra reffing
iron - well developed but needs refs
lithium - just needs a final cleanup
magnesium - needs history and refs
palladium - isn't too far; gogo Stone!?
thorium - well developed but lacking on some sections

Nergaal (talk) 20:10, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

Surely the work should be on the weakest articles, not those that are already B-class? Physchim62 (talk) 20:39, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

File:Periodic Table by Quality.png

before

It really depends on what is the actual goal. Technically the first articles should be the Top importance ones, as they receive the most reads. Also, technically, a project should aim to get their articles to A-class (we don't really have it, and technically it is above GA). As a result the top importance articles should be aimed for A class so people outside can use them. Leaving this aside, there is a more practical reasoning: the more top-level the article is, the more readers it tends to get, and as such more chances for further contributions. Also, I do think projects with more quality articles tend to attract more people since it means that there are model articles for people to try to use for other work. Nergaal (talk) 21:50, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

Leaving these aside: the stub class is back! I have gone through the articles and I've tried to be pretty consistent. For the really important articles I've been more stringent about B-class, while for the others, if there is only one or two issues I tended to leave them at B. Many articles were doing really bad on references so I've tended to be relatively strict: 25-30 at least for B class (and if most of them were in one section I tended to adding a C-class); and 15-20 at least for C. Some had even less than 5 so I assigned them as stub. Nergaal (talk) 21:50, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

I've just put beryllium back at start-class simply for the lack of info on toxicity (feel free to change if anyone disagrees with me). I don't think the number of references is as important as the coverage of the article. Physchim62 (talk) 22:04, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

I went through essentially all the pages listed in the project. I did upgrade some pages, but most of them I did downgrade. I also fixed some to redirect, and also added all the FPics to the File category. I also fixed the beryllium section. Nergaal (talk) 23:53, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

GA +1
B -32
C +8
start +20
stub -41
list +3

Nergaal (talk) 00:02, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

In terms of editing priorities, I lean toward Physchim62's view, that the poorly developed articles should be higher priority than the more polished one. We are not here to serve Wikipedia-central, but readers. At least for non-weirdo elements: (Hassium]] etc are not priorities for chemists.--Smokefoot (talk) 01:20, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

In a "historic" perspective looking back in the development since August 2008 it is clear that the transition elements which were start at that time now are GAs. So the poorly developed became well developed. There are are the obscure ones like rhenium, niobium and yttrium, but in the case to roll over the transition metals even nickel, platinum and chromium reached the GA status. I always back up when I read in the article something like the metastable isotope is used as a new weapon or the oxide is used widely to cure all forms of cancer, or that the addition to the tap water produces severe problems or when the most stable isotope is so unstable that the element can only be handled by a physicist and not a chemist. So my choice went always to the poor and underdeveleoped with some exceptions due to the problem I have to deal with people like the one I encountered in the Uranium trioxide wars. To be very honest even a discussion here will not change my view, unless somebody makes up a cooperation to improve one of the less favoured articles I will stick to the ones I like most. --Stone (talk) 21:22, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

I'm busy with fermium, which has long been on my 2DO list because the article lacked a vital fact about the element (now included). I couldn't give a monkey's about GA or FA, but you get a quicker return on your effort with the weakest articles. Physchim62 (talk) 00:03, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

I will work on cobalt, palladium and arsenic. I hope this will help.-Stone (talk) 10:14, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

break

Fermium is up for GAN. Any other easy pickings that anybody wants to collaborate on? <wink>berkelium<wink> Nergaal (talk) 22:48, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

I worked a lot on Sulfur, which was only C-level, adding graphics, converting lists to paragraphs, and inserting some general references. I am going to continue, probably. If anyone has suggestions for improving the article further, please leave a note at Talk:Sulfur. --Smokefoot (talk) 23:08, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

I finisher going once through the lithium article and cleaned up all the major issues. It needs quite a few more references before it is ready, but if anybody wants to take a look feel free to drop in. Nergaal (talk) 03:16, 26 September 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, I'll do some work on berkelium, now I'm on an actinide roll! Physchim62 (talk) 10:08, 26 September 2010 (UTC)

Isotope spins in the infoboxes

I've mentioned this a long time ago and I don't remember what was the outcome: I proposed to add another column to the isotope entries for the nuclear spin. For example for 31P it is more useful to say that it has spin of -1/2 than that it "is stable with 16 neutrons". I would like to go ahead and start adding them, but I have no idea about the technicalities since the elementboxes use a tempate-within-a-template for isotopes. Nergaal (talk) 06:49, 26 September 2010 (UTC)

yes! The spin is very imp as are related props such as mag moment, isn't this info available elsewhere on WP?--Smokefoot (talk) 14:48, 26 September 2010 (UTC)

There is one problem: for the majority of stable isotopes I = µ = 0, because both Z and N are even numbers. Do we really want to be adding columns to the sub-table in the infobox just to fill them up with zeros? I agree that spin and magnetic moment are important for NMR, but is this the best way to present the information? Physchim62 (talk) 15:22, 26 September 2010 (UTC)

If spin is zero is still important, because then, stuff like NMR or EPR is not doable. Plus, not that many isotopes have spin zero: half of the elements don't have an even Z; and the even Z ones tend to have at least one non-zero spin isotope that is useful, and this should probably stand out. Nergaal (talk) 18:11, 26 September 2010 (UTC)

Why not do a List of magnetic properties of nuclides? That way, it could be limited to interesting nuclides and avoid overburdening the element infoboxes. Most nuclides are useless for NMR or EPR, for one reason or another and, in any case, these are only two techniques out of many. Physchim62 (talk) 20:27, 26 September 2010 (UTC)

I started working on User:Nergaal/List of NMR isotopes a long time ago but kind of gave up as it required a ton of work. All I am trying to say is that having the spin in quite a few cases is more informative than saying a nuclide has x neutrons (anybody who understands what is a neutron knows x without any help) or listing all sorts of decay energies and products for radioisotopes. If you guys don't think that is the case then keep the status quo. Nergaal (talk) 20:56, 26 September 2010 (UTC)

I completely agree that our current coverage of isotope properties is sub-optimal. I often see isotope sections (and especially the lists of isotopes) and think "why is this supposed to interest me?" I think there needs to be more thought invested in picking out those isotopes that are interesting for a given element (if indeed there are any) and ignoring the rest. Maybe some elements won't have an "isotopes" section in their article, just as some elements obviously don't need a "uses" section simply to say that they have no uses. Are the isotopes of an element even important enough to have a section in the infobox? Physchim62 (talk) 03:21, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

YES! There are plenty of other entries that are of less interest (hardness?). The point of an infobox is to put stuff that does not fit well in the text, and if the isotopes are not there (which they should be if for nothing else than for their abundance) then a lot more technical information will go in the text. Nergaal (talk) 06:13, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

I think this is valuable material to present in our element boxes. Can we have them collapsed, to save space, only to expand when clicked? --Rifleman 82 (talk) 05:21, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

I don't think hiding them would help. The infobox itself is anyways about a third smaller than it was about a year ago. Nergaal (talk) 06:14, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

Anyways, I was only proposing squeezing the present columns a bit to get one more column in. Nergaal (talk) 06:13, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

German FAs

I just noticed that on the German wikipedia there are quite a few articles that are in very good shape that they have featured, but on ours are GA at best and some are even start. Other that being a little low on references, these articles are very well expanded: Cf, Cs, Am, Ar, As, Ba, Pb, Cm, Ga, In, Kr, Li, Os, Ru, Tc, Te, V, Zr. Nergaal (talk) 02:42, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

Anybody interested on working any of these elements should use google translate to look for further information on the articles here. Nergaal (talk) 02:50, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

The German wikipedia is less stringent to have a credible source for the facts you present. There a credible author is capable to do more with his credibility. Even a good translation will get in the English wikipedia not more than a GA. I used the German wiki articles on Cs, As, Pb, Ga, In, Os, Ru, Te and V already to upgrade ours, so there might be a little left to do.--Stone (talk) 05:15, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

Agree, but even for caesium I just found two things that were not in the article. As for the others there is plenty of stuff there: look at their americium, krypton or argon. Nergaal (talk) 05:58, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

Their GAs include: Bk, Cl, F, Au, Hf, Na, Ne, P, Re, Rh; they could be useful too. Nergaal (talk) 06:07, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

A general note: I have translated several FAs and GAs from Russian and German wiki (not elements related) and can add a word of caution - their referencing quality and even phrasing (in native language) would often fail en.wiki FAC. Also, watch for the date of promotion - their standards are improving and some old FAs are well below en.wiki GA level. Materialscientist (talk) 06:17, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

I am not doubting it. I just wanted to point out to editors that skimming through the translations is sometimes useful to find holes in coverage of our project. Nergaal (talk) 04:15, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

Pictorial periodic table

I found User:Raeky/ElementalFPs and I realized that we might be able to create a "list" article with the best representations of elements that we have. Do you guys think something like that would be useful? Nergaal (talk) 04:15, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

Making the data in the infoboxes independently retrievable

Although the templates for the infoboxes are criticized at Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous)#Large category of single use templates, what makes this interesting is that with a small modification (see the top line of User:Patrick/Template:Infobox helium) the data become independently retrievable:

{{User:Patrick/Template:Infobox helium|User:Patrick/pstp|p=symbol}} → He
{{User:Patrick/Template:Infobox helium|User:Patrick/pstp|p=thermal conductivity}} → 0.1513

etc.

Patrick (talk) 23:15, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

Fair use images in infoboxes

Our infoboxes are technically templates and thus per WP:NFCC #9 don't allow fair use images. A possible solution for this is have an image parameter in the infobox template, of the sort {{infobox promethium|img=61 Pm 02 large.jpg}}. If agreed, could someone change the template for that please? Materialscientist (talk) 01:27, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

fixed it with <includeonly>asdafa</includeonly>. I don't have time to do it now but thorium should also be done the same way. Nergaal (talk) 06:40, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

also [fluorine??? Nergaal (talk) 07:04, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

As a side note, I have started wikipedia:WikiProject Elements/Pictures to keep count of all the elemental images. It is still under construction on bottom. My idea is to have the statuses of all the images we have (blue would be FPs, green good quality, possibly FPable, yellow is ok image, red copyright, and grey for none yet). Nergaal (talk) 06:40, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

I've added <includeonly></includeonly> to some fair-use images I put for actinides, but I don't think we can justify fair-use for thorium, fluorine and similar elements because their images are not unique. Beware, that infobox images do change (improve) from time to time (due to User:Alchemist-hp mostly), i.e. your table would need updating. Materialscientist (talk) 07:27, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

While for Th I would understand that, for F just read the description the link has; it is essentially impossible to put F in a transparent container unles you try really, really hard. For Am and Cm I would have propped the images a tiny bit more. Nergaal (talk) 07:50, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

Single use templates

There's another link to it above, but there's a discussion going on at Wikipedia:Village_pump_(miscellaneous)#Large_category_of_single_use_templates. Single use templates are rarely (ever?) a good thing. At this point, other than editorial convenience, I'm failing to see a reason to keep all the templates at Category:Periodic table infobox templates. Input please. --Hammersoft (talk) 14:28, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

Vandalism monitoring. Unlike the main body, the templates rarely need updates, and essentially most of the IP edits are reverted. Without a separate page, the extremely tedious infobox on oxygen would be really hard to keep an eye on. Nergaal (talk) 16:38, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

Relevant: Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Elements/Archive_10#Template:Infobox<element>_-_why_do_these_exist. The general rule seems to have been WP:IAR'd. --Cybercobra (talk) 16:43, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

FAC:Caesium

The review is really slow; anybody care to give some input? Nergaal (talk) 02:46, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

Silicon

I was looking, but I could not find a Biological role section in the silicon article. Is this done by purpose or has there been never a try to expand the one sentence in occurence of Biogenic silica to something useful? I will try to expand this a little bit based on [9]. --Stone (talk) 11:12, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

I think the latter since it is in many places weakly expanded; also, see Silicon_life#Silicon_biochemistry. I hope I will get some time to help. Nergaal (talk) 14:21, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

Element 117

This article was moved from Ununseptium today to Ununseptine. I'm a little busy, and a brief search did not reveal the IUPAC recommendations with regard to its provisional name. Perhaps someone else here can help? --Rifleman 82 (talk) 23:44, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

Copyrighted images

I was looking for images that we are missing and I found a few. What do you guys think?

Po: [10] or [11]: former has a description, while the latter is probably but not 100% sure) actual polonium metal
Rn: [12] no description
Ac: [13] no description
Pa: [14] same
Am: [15] same
Pm: [16] same
Th: [17] is it free?

I would think RSC is a reputable source, but I cannot find any description for the images. Nergaal (talk) 21:53, 5 October 2010 (UTC)

dia

Chemical elements data references

I realized we keep the pages listed here under the rug. Should we continue to do that? If yes, they might be placed in a better space than the mainspace. Nevertheless, I guess some of them would deserve to be converted to actual articles. Nergaal (talk) 20:46, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

Infobox: isotopes

Unless anybody does not think it is a good idea, I am going to remove the decay energy ("DE (MeV)") entry from the isotopes section and add one with nuclear spin sometimes in the next few days. Nergaal (talk) 06:28, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

Boiling points of the elements

Someone suggested to me that I should mention on this page that I am discussing apparent variations, in some cases amounting to hundreds of degrees of difference, between values quoted in the literature and elsewhere on the internet for the boiling points of some elements, on this page - Talk:Boiling_points_of_the_elements_(data_page). So I invite anyone interested to respond by joining the discussion on that other page. Thanks. Peter Dow (talk) 22:59, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

Heat capacity: Constant volume or pressure

I brought this up in the Helium discussion. For gases, heat capacity measured under constant volume or under constant pressure need to be distinguished. The unsuspecting reader of the Helium page, for instance, will read the number and use it in his constant volume calculations and get wrong results, as the number specified is for constant pressure. But nowhere this is indicated! Therefore for gases (gaseous at measurement temperature) there should be an indication like "(const. pressure)".

Now it would be simple to change the title "Specific heat capacity" in Template:Infobox_element, but that is not what we want: 1) it would be changed in ALL element's infoboxes, even where in fact constant volume is assumed, 2) it would be shown even for non-gaseous elements where it's not wrong but irrelevant. I think the proper way would be to allow two different type of entries in the Template:Infobox_helium (for instance). It almost looks to me as somebody already tried to do something like it (there is an alternative "heat capacity 2="), but it does not do what I'm talking about.

I do not understand too much of the syntax and formalism of the template pages, so - if this can be agreed upon - can somebody more knowledgeable do the appropriate changes? WikiPidi (talk) 15:40, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

As noted on the helium talk page now, this particular helium heat capacity of 20.786 J/mole/K is exactly 2.5000 R (to 5 sig digits!), so obviously it's constant pressure heat capacity for a monatomic gas. Furthermore, exactly the same figure is given for the the other 4 noble gases Ne,Ar,Kr,Xe. This is fishy, as real substances rarely show the same heat capacity to 5 sig digits, even when it is the correct one. Even fishier still, radon is also listed as having the same heat capacity of 20.786 J/mole/K, which means this is certainly a calculated not a measured value, since nobody has collected enough radon to measure its heat capacity to that value (radon itself produces so much heat from its own decay that this would be a difficult and perilous measurement to even get an estimate for). SO at this point I have to say is TILT. Calculated values from theory should be marked so.

So we have a systemic problem not only of no conditions being marked, but a calculated value being used without warning. S B H arris 17:29, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

Okay, then if nobody objects, I'm going to change all these to "constant pressure, calculated value" S B H arris 11:19, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

Either that, or the values can be referenced here (with fewer sig figs). Physchim62 (talk) 13:14, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

Goldene

I'm not sure if this is the right place to ask this, but I couldn't think of a better area. I'm working on an article about a series of Swiss coins (shooting thalers), and one of my reference books states that certain shooting medals were minted from a metal known as goldene. I can't find any reference to such a metal on the internet. I'm familiar with goloid, which is what I think the author might have been referring to. The book is from 1965, so it's possible that the word is no longer in use. Does anyone know what metal he could have been talking about?-RHM22 (talk) 03:28, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

In German the noun Gold means gold while the adjective golden meaning golden, made from gold or looking like gold. One example of usage would be: Die goldene Münze... translates to The golden coin. So what you are looking for is a golden looking or real golden coin--Stone (talk) 07:26, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

The termination -e is due to the noun being feminine/neutral? Nergaal (talk) 07:29, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

The e at the end is disturbing for English speakers, but a normal change for German language. See the title of the German wiki article Goldene_Himbeere and the English one for Golden Raspberry Award.--Stone (talk) 07:31, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

Thanks! So you think that the author was just saying that the medals were golden in appearance, but not necessarily made of gold? That would make sense.-RHM22 (talk) 13:00, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

caesium

Here we go again. There is a user throwing all sorts of comments at caesium. To me, at least half of his edits there are POV pushing; furthermore, in his opinion USGS is not an authoritative source. I cannot take very seriously the opinion of somebody who says in his edits: it is not very similar to other alkali metals - it is the most different of all non radioactive ones or the initial chem section is somewhat misleading "Isolated caesium is extremely reactive" It is in fact robust, even distillable; as having either a sufficient chemical background, or sufficient good intentions to deal with an FA. Since I have a COI in that article, I would prefer if somebody else gets involved and deals with those edits. Nergaal (talk) 19:29, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the note and the notice. Maybe we could get some other editor to arbitrate my revisions. One step would be for you (or me) to make a list of concerns. We can leave things alone at cesium until then. If we can both stay cool, the article will come out of this process better. --Smokefoot (talk) 20:04, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

I hope I can help here. From the work I saw from both of you I know you rank relatively high on the wikipedia scale for good authors of articles and I can guess the education and age you have from your working style here. To you Nergaal: Smokefoot belongs to the good ones and is qualification he showed on chemistry articles are that of an professional! To you Smokefoot: Nergaal is also a professional, but he likes his FAs and GAs and so the heavy editing shortly after the FAC looks like stepping onto his lawn. So it would be best to go to the talk page of the article and assume good faith for the opposite side and start improving the article.

I like the USGS articles, but I also liked the rubber bible until I came to very serious points which showed me that the numbers are good but the text is lousy. So Smokefoot might have a certain point in which he has problems with USGS.
The reactivity and the precautions section are more written for a person without chemistry knowledge to show what the reactivity is compared to normal metals like iron and aluminium, while a chemist would compare caesium to potassium and than you only have a slightly higher risk and the reactivity is comparable.

--Stone (talk) 20:34, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

Yo, cesium in cold water explodes immediately. You can at least get away with putting tiny bits of potassium in cold water (where they merely ignite, if in air), but not cesium. Cesium reacts with water ICE right down to dry ice temperatures, whereas potassium at those temps is essentially inert to ice (try it). I've had occassion to play with cesium a little, and have always been sorry I didn't leave it behind glass in the ampule, where it should have stayed. Potassium is a lot like sodium to cut and handle in air, whereas you won't find anybody who will sell you cesium in oil, because it's not safe. The reactivity is NOT comparable at all. The following short videos are cited for those who haven't tried this. For those who need to see to believe:

Alkali metals in water

For the more patient; rubidium and cesium are added to water at the end. S B H arris 21:43, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

S B H arris 21:00, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

Responses

First to respond to Harris: One needs to be careful here: the question is not about cesium and water, but cesium. We dont want to give the impression to readers that an element is unstable. But I concede the point is semantic.

I would hope so, since I have no idea what an "unstable" element would be! You don't mean radioactive, I take it? Not much happens to any pure element if you heat it under helium or something. It might change allotropes, but there's never enough energy associated with that to present any dangers or reaction that is more dramatic than a color or phase change. I guess I missed the entire problem here.

As I read the text it seemed to be saying that in reactivity (toward other elements, of course) there's a big change from lithium to sodium to potassium; then cesium isn't much different from potassium. If that was the intention, I say nonsense! At each step in this progression, if you're used to working with, or handling the element before, the next alkali element will surprise you with extra reactivity, to the point of being dangerous. As the video shows for water, but it's true for any reaction, from that with oxygen, to those with primary, secondary, and teriary alcohols with various alkane groups. S B H arris 00:13, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

Okay, I will get picky since you want to hear how this game is played when the stakes are high. In my world, the phrase "Cs is highly reactive" is incomplete or incorrect. One is required to complete the statement, reactive toward what? Toward N₂? No, that is lithium. If my counterpart says, well you should see this video, we say, "Nice video for your pals, but pyrophoric character is of course difficult to claim as intrinsic to a material, because the dispersiveness (surface area) plays a decisive role." People often say things like "X is reactive," but such statements are imprecise. That is where I am coming from, rigor or rigor mortis, you decide.--Smokefoot (talk) 00:42, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

Ok, using the Aldrich website I got the same NFPA diamond for Li and Cs (3-0-2-W) while for chlorine is (3-0-0) and oxygen is (0-0-0). The third one is reactivity. I am surprised that Cs is not 3, but that is only my opinion. MSDS published by suppliers give Cs as more reactive than Cl. Nergaal (talk) 01:08, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

I wonder what they consider a "3" but remember we're only considering elements, here? Of course, nothing is reactive toward EVERYTHING. Of the the free elements, however, there are two that stand out as being the most able to attack the most compounds normally found in the environment, to turn themselves back into compounds. They are fluorine and cesium. For element collectors, they are the K2 and Mt. Everest of the chemically problematic elements to keep. Only the radioactives give more trouble. Probably rubidium is next at #3.

Here is 2 grams of cesium blowing hell out of a whole bathtube of water. That much rubidium merely knocks a hole in it. Potassium is not even in the running. Here is cesium spontaneously exploding when mixed with sulfur. Try that with potassium and you don't get much. S B H arris 04:29, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

Um...that video is fake. (You can see the wires running into the bathtub: they simply bombed the bathtub and pretended it was Rb and Cs. Ref: an old Bad Science column in The Guardian.) Lanthanum-138 (talk) 03:12, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

There is a completely rational explanation for all this: the concept of critical mass. For any strongly exothermic reaction at the critical mass the reaction is self-sustaining. Above the critical mass a runaway reaction occurs, commonly described as an explosion. In chemical terms criticality occurs when the heat generated is equal to the heat dissipated. When more heat is generated than is dissipated the temperature will continue to rise until explosion occurs because reaction rates increase with increasing temperature. With the alkali metals the heat of reaction with water increases with atomic number, so the critical mass decreases. To say that caesium always explodes on contact with water is wrong. I don't know what the critical mass is, but I guess it will be of the order of milligrams. Put any quantity less than the critical mass into water and it will "burn" just as with a small quantity of sodium. Petergans (talk) 22:30, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

My edit summaries (in quotes) and amplifications

"move non-uses out of uses - jeesh!, replace specialized primary JOC article with review, sections for Chem, some fact check"

a number of non-applications or would be applications were listed, but I moved them to a separated subsection because they are not applications, no one uses them.

I replaced a primary reference to the use of CsF to an overview article that is more authoritative. Presumably noncontroversial.

"[Caesium] is not very similar to other alkali metals - it is the most different of all non radioactive ones"

Yes, it is tricky to make statements about an element being the most different since many criteria for comparison are possible. But within the alkali metal cations, the most different are either Li+ or Cs+. Cs+ is the largest (hence most lipophilic) of the alkali metal cations, and its halides and hydroxides crystallize in distinctive habits, as the article points out. In terms of helping readers, I felt that it would more useful to highlight differences within the alkali metals rather than similarities.

If anything I would vote for Li being the most different. Nergaal (talk) 22:21, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

"rm comment and primary ref on Cs as hydrogenation catalysis - jeesh!, it is not very useful in chemistry, and we dont need to distort reality for reader"

Strange refs always creep into articles (including the ones that I write!) but we dont want to mislead readers into thinking that Cs has any role in the otherwise important practice of alkene hydrogenation.

Cs is not very useful in chemistry. According to Ullmann's 20 tons/y are mined, and after the main applications, there is not much to go around to the chemists, and we dont use it much. Nothing wrong with the truth. Cs compounds are an oddity in the lab and in apps as well. CsF and Cs₂CO₃ are used in tiny amounts (I use the gentle term "niche").

Ullmann's points out that the chloride, sulfate, and trifluoroacetate are used in centrifugation as a major app for this element, so I highlighted this app in its own section.

My major concern is the reliance on the USGS pamphlet, which is cited 24x in the article, hence I announced my concern about the authority, and if we cannot agree on its authority, then other aspects of the article are questionable, right? Ullmann's says that Cs formate is under investigation, and it not an application. Also, parts of the article are plagiarized from the USGS document, which is a problem. US government documents are non-ideal foundations (again, 24 citations!) for an encyclopedia article (not that I have any gripe with the USGS). --Smokefoot (talk) 22:08, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

What Ullman source are you talking about? Nergaal (talk) 22:21, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

Here you go: Manfred Bick, Horst Prinz, "Cesium and Cesium Compounds" in Ullmann's Encyclopedia of Industrial Chemistry 2005, Wiley-VCH, Weinheim. doi:10.1002/14356007.a06 153.--Smokefoot (talk) 22:29, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/book/10.1002/14356007/homepage/WhatsNew.html. Wohoo, I have access to it. Still, it is not clear to me why Ullman would be a more useful resource than USGS. Nergaal (talk) 23:01, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

Not clear to me either. I am not an absolute authority on WP's definition authoritiveness. I could go on, but wont.--Smokefoot (talk) 00:42, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

There is a new Ullmann out from 2010, and somebody had access to it form one of the other element article authors. The use of Cs formate is new and as it does not use a highly refined material I would guess it should be the largest application. If somebody would ask me what is the largest application of NaCl I would hint that it is raw unprocessed salt is but on the street by Gritters. If jhad no access to Ullmann, but if there is a discrepancy between the two we have to mention both and let the reader decide.--Stone (talk) 20:07, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

I don't think that there is a new Ullmann's out for Cs. VCH-Wiley produces new volumes regularly, but probably not on Cs. But I will check. The USGS article is dated 2004, one year earlier than the Ullmann's volume, and I would doubt that the Ullmann's authors completely blew this. The USGS article appears pretty flawed to me in its chemistry (but probably excellent in geology). As I have mentioned previously, sections of the FA article on caesium are (or were before me) virtually plagiarized from the USGS article. Strange.--Smokefoot (talk) 00:51, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

Might not be the full version (2010 electronic release) so the chance is good that caesium is missing in that part of Ullmanns. [18]--Stone (talk) 22:30, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

There is no new version for caesium: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/book/10.1002/14356007/homepage/WhatsNew.html. Nergaal (talk) 23:21, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

Unknown symbol on Isotopes

Sorry to ask, I checked element's isotope pages and I see this symbol ^m. I cannot find what this means, and looked through the Isotope page.

example: ^80m1Y
also, Isotopes of chromium, does not have a list of isotopes.

Thanks, Marasama (talk) 18:40, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

^m denotes a metastable nuclear isomer. I agree, that should be mentioned in the isotope article.

The list of isotopes on isotopes of chromium was removed by a IP vandal. I've reverted it. shoy (reactions) 21:10, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, Marasama (talk) 15:29, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

Red Mercury mentioned in US Diplomatic Cables

Just a heads up since the wikileak's leak this morning. In it's instructions on handling defectors, red mercury is used as an example of a 'suspicious or dangerous' material that would be presented as evidence of a country enriching plutonium. It can be read both ways, depending on whether we stress the 'suspicious' part or the 'dangerous' part, and the call out to enriching plutonium is odd, but also not inconsistent with red mercury being a hoax. Might want to keep an eye on the article. -- ۩ Mask 19:24, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

the cable in question. - ۩ Mask 19:28, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

I don't think we should read much into the State Department directive. In several other sections, it discusses what information can be shared with local employees (such as security staff) and what information is classified. Most diplomats know very little about nuclear weapons or nuclear physics (quite understandably), so the "red mercury" hoax is is a harmless example that can be used to prevent a very real problem – someone trying to get access to the embassy while carrying a chemical or biological weapon as a suicide attack. Plutonium for nuclear weapons is not enriched: it is produced as highly isotopically pure plutonium-239 by nuclear reactors running to a specific refuelling cycle and power output, hence the difference between civilian and military nuclear reactors. I've watchlisted the article, just in case. Physchim62 (talk) 19:50, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

I had much the same thoughts, but I suspect it'll get the conspiracy folks out and active. Perhaps we should work a mention in preemptively? -- ۩ Mask 20:12, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps you could create a "Red mercury in popular culture" section along with the "Red mercury in fiction" section in the Red mercury article. ;). Otherwise: what Physchim62 said. These things are written by State Dept. types who know now science, like the stuff about Saddam Hussein's supposed "mobile weapons laboratories" for producing bioweapons. If you know about biology, you know that microbe industrial culture/bioreactor operations take tremendous water flows both in and out, and the one thing that it would silly to make them, is "mobile". The idea is about as funny as "mobile sewage treatment plant," and the U.S. eventually had to eat their words (but should have known beforehand how unlikely this was). Likewise, the famous Iraqi aluminum tubes that poor Colin Powell had to sell the U.N. on, as being suitable as nothing other than uranium gas-enrichment centrifuge tubes, and they couldn't possibly be rocket tubes. Alas, they were rocket tubes. Nobody in the Bush administration had bothered to ask any US experts in gas enrichment about the matter, and if they had, they'd have found out what they probably didn't want to hear. The New York Times has a big role in bulding up that story, also (so much for WP's standards of WP:RS and WP:V when it comes to science). Anyway, can we please not have this happen again and again? If you let journalists and politicians make paranoid decisions based on lack of knowledge of science, you get things like the 2003 Iraq war. You know? S B H arris 23:32, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

Or maybe we should add the State Department cable to the "Red mercury in fiction" section ;) Physchim62 (talk) 23:36, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

Yep. S B H arris 23:52, 28 November 2010 (UTC)