Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Physics/Archive January 2012

edit "Cold Fusion" Nine References to Pathological Science Should Be Moved to Historical Footnotes

Nine references stating Cold fusion is a pathological science yet I do not see it listed as pseudo science on your list, Under the Wikipedia article on Pathological science Cold Fusion is prominently listed.

LENR - Low Energy Nuclear Reaction and the Widom Larson Theory, aka Condensed Matter Nuclear or Lattice Enabled Nuclear, aka the historically incorrect name "Cold Fusion" "Cold Fusion" was the 'initially misunderstood' birthplace of LENR research. It should link forward to this accepted interdisciplinary branch of theoretical and experimental physics. The majority of scientists exploring this field are not 'quacks' and they are not involved in 'pathological' or 'pseudo' science'. Do you agree or disagree.

Is it: A) Science. B) Pathological science.

I have found no evidence of pathological science among these high level researchers. Wiki has a 'reverse relevance' problem on this subject. It needs to be allowed to reflect the current state of the art which is not allowed due to the lingering stigma created during the infancy of research into this phenomenon.

Please review my efforts to correct it. I would appreciate your opinion on this.

Respectfully, --Gregory Goble (talk) 12:25, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Reliable sources (9 as you point out) describe it as pathological science so it should remain as so. It is seperate from pseudoscience so I don't see why you have mentioned that. Your opinions appear to be based on original research, original research is not suitable for inclusion on wikipedia. IRWolfie- (talk) 19:09, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

Hafele-Keating input

I have a similar but perhaps less obvious issue at Talk: Hafele–Keating experiment#Revert of GPS related paragraph removal where I propose to remove the closing paragraph of the section Hafele-Keating experiment#Historical and scientific background, again per wp:NOR and lack of a source to back the connection the anon insists on making. Could someone look into this and perhaps comment? Cheers and best wishes to all. - DVdm (talk) 10:31, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

IRWolfie, thanks for the comment. I have removed the paragraph and commented on the talk page. - DVdm (talk) 12:52, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

Schrödinger equation slight re-write (again)

It appears my re-writes to the article are completely useless... I tried to make it better. Could anyone please give feedback on what they think? I'm guessing someone will eventually restore it to the original version a week ago, but first I want feedback........ =( -- F = q(E + v × B) 16:16, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

The changes seem fine to me. IRWolfie- (talk) 13:34, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

Don't take it personally – I think that anonymous user is slamming the article as a whole, not your edits. Schrödinger equation could probably use some introductory material for a more general audience (see, for example, Introduction to quantum mechanics). RockMagnetist (talk) 16:20, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

I think the article is pretty decent. The Schrödinger article is on the equation and it's properties, there is only so much that can be done without dumbing down the article itself. Care should be taken not to reduce the Technical content. A link is already provided at the top of the article to Introduction to quantum mechanics. Any introduction into the Schrödinger equation will also be technical; if someone wants to give it a try they can, but I'd be a bit unsure as to how someone would do it. IRWolfie- (talk) 16:49, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

I'm happy to read this, and agree with both of you. =) -- F = q(E + v × B) 17:36, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

I agree that the article is generally pretty good, but some hints from Make technical articles understandable could be applied here: "Put the most understandable parts of the article up front" and "Write one level down". One level down would be a freshman college physics student, I think. The body of the article starts with "For a general quantum system the Schrödinger equation is: ... where ...", which is fine for a scientific journal but forbidding to anyone who doesn't already know what the Schrodinger equation is. The introduction could start with a little context (including wave equations in general and complex numbers) and define the terms in an approachable way, climaxing in the equation itself. RockMagnetist (talk) 18:26, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

The history could probably be put as first section perhaps and expanded it to make it more introductory perhaps? IRWolfie- (talk) 19:05, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

I agree again, and will try re-writing in those areas soon, unless of course anyone else does. Admittedly - perhaps another problem is an enourmous flood of equations beyond the history section? It couldn't be helped though.....-- F = q(E + v × B) 19:38, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

It's good to have the technical information there; the equations have due weight. Rather than removing equations it might be better to give more context; i.e We don't want to reduce the content in order to make it more accessible. IRWolfie- (talk) 20:12, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

A little introductory material at the top of each section would help make the flood of equations understandable. RockMagnetist (talk) 21:23, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

If the history section is used as the introduction, it will have to be modified considerably because it doesn't explain the concepts. RockMagnetist (talk) 21:23, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

Given the feedback here and the talk page - I think we can agree on the following:

• Obviously not remove the mass of mathematical detail (else the point of the re-write would be defeated)
• Rather than put the historical context upfront, add more context to the first section which states the most general form of the Schrödinger equation. That way the historical section doesn't need re-writing, and also its better to get to the point in actually stating the equation with the local explanation, instead of making the reader wade through the background. This is how it’s also done in the Dirac equation article, and I would say its a good way to do it.
• Add more context to each of the special cases. Due to the grouping by time-independent/dependent potential, one/N particles, 1/3 dimensions, perhaps the equations could be tabulated logically? Then qualitative info is presented before the table, and quantitative applications to specific situations follow after, in increasing complexity from the free particle to H and He atoms? The size of the article may be reduced, though it may be slightly harder to read?
• Try to, somehow, re-structure the sections at increasing levels of difficulty (mentioned at the talk page):
  • The lead intro is probably fine as it is (equation box? I'm not going to delete it as it’s someone else's work, but the equations are already in the article and boxed, in more appropriate places...), though some of it can be leaked into the statement of the equation, since its qualitative info on the equation.
  • The statement of the equation should explain all things qualitative about the Schrödinger equation and the significance of the wave-function solution, and lead into...
  • ...The historical background.
  • Then comes the plausibility argument? It contains the assumptions which introduce the backbone of the equation. The derivation can be placed in a show/hide box? The history sets the scene for the derivation by explaining some of its qualitative development, the derivation then corresponds to the actual mathematical development.
  • Perhaps the properties section could be moved upfront, after the plausibility argument? That’s mostly qualitative and introduces the nature of the equation quickly, but it only makes more technical sense after the derivation. Hence the show/hide box - interested readers will open the box to see the mathematical details, otherwise the assumptions suffice to back most of the properties.
  • Then come the special cases + solutions therein.

These are my intentions, based on what everyone says...

-- F = q(E + v × B) 22:27, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

I will commence by adding the extra context, but not moving sections (yet)...-- F = q(E + v × B) 22:44, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

Sounds like a good program. I would change one thing about the lead - move that quote by Schrödinger into the body. It's not very helpful where it is. RockMagnetist (talk) 01:32, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

No problem, will do.-- F = q(E + v × B) 02:14, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

Rather than tables for the special cases - I resorted to columns for now: easier to handle and edit. Also added columns for the properties section: on the left are "positive or neutral" properties, which make the equation useful; on the right is relativity, a very "negative" problem for the Schrödinger equation... It’s also easier to read, since without the columns there are a few lines every now and then which reach across the page but then there is still loads of empty space - may as well make use of the room. The intension is not to cram info into crushed spaces, just make use of the room and have pros on one side, cons on the other. I don't mind if someone deletes those, they're optional. Furthermore, even though we proposed to do so - I have no idea what to write for each section of the special cases without repeating what’s already in the article. The Schrödinger equation is simply kinetic + potential energy, for one particle the Hamiltonian takes the form etc etc for n particles etc etc for on dimension etc for three etc ... I'll leave that for now, I wouldn't say that’s entirely essential. -- F = q(E + v × B) 02:21, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

I made an attempt to make the intro more "penetrable" - it should be, assuming the reader knows what energy is (!). Who would agree to an entirley new section/subsection on the wave-particle duality + connection to the SE (with an animation for good measures, see the talk page), near the beggining? -- F = q(E + v × B) 14:34, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

Looks like a good start. However, I recommend we discuss these issues in talk:Schrödinger equation. RockMagnetist (talk) 17:39, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

Above Threshold Ionization - Opinions needed

Does the following approximate analytical solution section add anything to this article? (I don't see any source for it either) IRWolfie- (talk) 18:51, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

Seems a bit long, and since there are no sources it’s not verifiable. I don't really think it adds anything useful to be honest - the reader will drown in a load of mathematical terminology and formulae, but it’s not very easy to follow, non-physics readers would simply switch off. It is possible to understand the first (and only) paragraph without it. I'd be inclined to only keep it if sources can be found, else it may as well be removed. (I can't find/don't have any references for it) -- F = q(E + v × B) 21:26, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

I've removed it for the moment. IRWolfie- (talk) 21:41, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

Yep - fine with me.-- F = q(E + v × B) 23:03, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

With me also. Xxanthippe (talk) 23:40, 3 January 2012 (UTC).

astrophysics of planetary orbits

An issue came up at WT:ASTRO about orbits of exoplanets. A user is proposing to replace current tables of exoplanets with a different format of table with different information. You may be interested in the discussion of the proposed changes. 76.65.128.132 (talk) 05:45, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

An Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything

I think I've brought this article to this project before, but An Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything could still use the help of more experts. I've also opened at discussion at the Fringe Noticeboard (see WP:Fringe theories/Noticeboard#Need help on An Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything), and the suggested I tag the article for expert help again. Qwyrxian (talk) 13:02, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

I've taken a look at the thread at WP:FTN, and your understanding of the state of the theory seems to be pretty much correct. There's a broad class of mathematical models called gauge theories, which involve setting up a description of particle behavior where the equations have certain symmetries. There are many "symmetry groups" to choose from when building a model of this type; this one is based on the "simple exceptional Lie group" called "E8" (the paper name is a pun on this; scientists do that). Various forms of "symmetry breaking" turn this symmetrical set of equations at high energy into the messier set we observe at normal energies. So, in short, there's nothing particularly special about the _type_ of model this person has proposed; they've just made an unusual choice for symmetry group.

The problem is that they didn't go through the usual channels for publishing this. That's seen as a great big warning flag by the scientific community (self-publishing implies that you _couldn't_ get it published in the usual places). It did hit the press a while back, so it's notable and verifiable, but problems will occur if it's being presented as carrying more weight in the physics community than it actually does.

I'm not in a position to vet the article, but there are a handful of particle physics types here who might be able to. I hope that I've managed to provide a bit of useful context. --Christopher Thomas (talk) 21:23, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Lisi said his original E8 paper was posted to the arxiv and not submitted to a journal (perhaps he drew inspiration from Grigori Perelman), but a following paper with collaborators was published in a journal, and his latest paper on the theory was published in a conference proceedings.-Scientryst (talk) 23:59, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

This certainly reinforces notability, but that wasn't being disputed. For evaluating weight within the scientific community, it would be a question of "which journal" and "how many citations by unrelated groups". Regarding conferences, I've written enough conference papers to understand why journal papers are usually the ones taken seriously.

Is anyone here familiar with particle physics journals? Headbomb? Anyone else? --Christopher Thomas (talk) 00:12, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

I am familiar with journals yes, but the AESToE article is flying over my head. I utterly suck at group theory, and I'm not really sure what I'm being asked to evaluate here. The general feeling with E8 theory seems to be that it looks promising (or at one point, looked so), had lots of media reaction and lots of big shots giving their opinions, and then ... nothing much. I doubt anyone would call Lisi a quack of anything like that, but it's likely that at least a few would call him wrong. Being wrong happens. We'd have a clearer picture of things if the media didn't get in on it. If this silence is caused by a lack of follow-through because of the CERN stuff being in the spotlight, or if it just failed to convince people, or if it was soundly debunked and people are now running away from it, I honestly couldn't tell.

Most of the debate seems to have taken place on the arxiv, which popular science mags / mainstream going crazy anytime someone says something for or against. This is fine in terms of saying "X happened" and "Y thinks this...", but interpreting that mess to say whether or not E8 is sound or not is textbook WP:SYNTH. All we can say from pop science mags and pop science platforms (like New Scientist, TED talks, Discover, expert blogs, etc.) is that E8 has its proponents, but also has opponents. What we'd need is a review of E8, and none of the source currently used are reliability heavyweights. What we need is something like Journal of Physics A/G, Physical Review D, European Physical Journal A, Science, Nature, or similar. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 04:19, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

To answer your question from the first paragraph, I wanted an assessment of a) whether the journal in which the E8 paper was published was one of the mainstream venues for such papers, and b) what the number of citations of the E8 paper by others says about its notability (journals in different fields vary widely with respect to this, so it'd take someone familiar with publications in that field to evaluate it). This would help assess weight within the scientific community. I knew you'd compiled a list of scientific journals a while back, so I figured asking you wouldn't hurt (I'm in a different field, so it's out of my area of expertise). --Christopher Thomas (talk) 04:48, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

Which journals? None are mentionned. The E8 paper was never published. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 05:04, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

Lisi's paper with collaborators is in Journal of Physics A. Which is not to say his theory is right, or well cited, but it answers Headbomb's question. Also, the most recent paper to cite Lisi is by someone named James Bjorken, which rings a bell.-Scientryst (talk) 05:15, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

This paper, and Scientryst knows this well, because it was a long argument of discussion, is just a partially related paper on unification. It barely mentions E8 and it doesn't have a big overlap with the core of the E8 stuff. I work in particle physics and group theory and I think Qwyrxian has a correct interpretation of the matter.

In general, Lisi isn't a crackpot, but his theory is more similar to a promising toy model that so far hasn't produced many results than to a theory of everything. As such, it's still at a very premature and incomplete stage. Lisi's theory page should be adjusted, but I think that at the moment we aren't very far from a reasonable version, as long as somebody can take care of the messy chronology section. Lisi's page as a notable person is a little too long. The E8 stuff has had a page as long as QCD and Lisi's page was longer than Murray Gell-Mann's (and we are talking about fundamental discoveries of the last 50 years, and Gell-Mann even won the Nobel Prize for QCD). The E8 stuff has had a page also longer than the Cabibbo–Kobayashi–Maskawa matrix and Lisi's page is longer than the three physicists mentioned (two of them won the Nobel Prize for it). Now Lisi has become a TV person, reinforcing notability, but the version of Lisi's page yesterday was as long as Larry King's. I am available to fully discuss details of the physics and the group theory behind the model. 24.7.128.58 (talk) 21:36, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

A current statement under discussion in Lisi's bio lede is that "The theory is incomplete and not widely accepted by the scientific community." To me, this sounds like Lisi's work, correct or not, was not accepted as a work of science. I'm concerned that's an overstatement. I would like to clarify this to "The theory is incomplete and not widely accepted by the scientific community as a theory of everything." Which of those, if either, is preferable? Feedback from editors with a physics background would be especially appreciated.-Scientryst (talk) 18:28, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

Just out of curiousity, what would need to be added to make this a complete theory of everything? JRSpriggs (talk) 06:37, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

At minimum, a successful description of the three generations of fermions, with masses, and a consistent quantum description.-Scientryst (talk) 07:51, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

What Scientryst says about what's missing *at minumum* is pretty much correct. The problem is that at this stage fermions and fermion masses are described in the theory as a direction to take, with no explicit working procedure (BRST and antigeneration problems). Long story short at the moment the theory requires a leap of faith to be looked at both as a standard approach to unification and as a TOE. In my opinion Lisi has a good understanding of a lot of what he talks about, but he failed to approach his attempt being conservative. He made bold claims hoping that some unconventional techniques will eventually turn out to be successful but he didn't offer any explicit proof of that and eventually some problems that were bigger than initially thought emerged. I think his main error was to present the paper with a poetic style, pretending that actually a theory of everything was presented, instead of approaching directly and upfront each individual and delicate point. The back reaction was stronger than he deserved, I think, but sometimes his answers in popular articles were stubborn and not incline to really discuss the problems. ~GT~ 98.244.54.152 (talk) 02:59, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

An alert that there is further discussion of the paper at WP:AN/I.[1] Xxanthippe (talk) 23:29, 11 January 2012 (UTC).

Category merge proposal

A merger of Category:Phase changes into Category:Phase transitions is being proposed. See Cfd discussion. RockMagnetist (talk) 16:17, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

Ramsden electrical device / Jesse Ramsden

I know there's some better quality pictures of Ramsden's devices on the net, but none were uploaded on wikipedia to illustrate Jesse Ramsden's article (probably license issues).

Here's a picture taken some time ago when my grandfather's device was functional.

Ramsden electrical device (not a reproduction)

--Julien (talk) 11:59, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Quantum Mysticism - History of Quantum Physics related article

This article seems odd to me suggesting that essentially all the big names of QM were dabbling in Quantum mysticism. Is there anyone interested in having a look? IRWolfie- (talk) 13:45, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, I'd like more citations, but that doesn't seem that implausible. Four people hardly count as “all the big names”, and it's not that uncommon for otherwise very bright people to end up with a couple weird beliefs. ― A. di M.​  18:14, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

From short biographies on them I saw no mention of mysticism in connection with Bohr, Heisenberg or Pauli. It seem a lot of OR in the lede to link them to the topic, such as citing a coat of arms. IRWolfie- (talk) 20:58, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

Wolfgang Pauli#Early years

At the end of 1930, shortly after his postulation of the neutrino and immediately following his divorce in November, Pauli had a severe breakdown. He consulted psychiatrist and psychotherapist Carl Jung who, like Pauli, lived near Zurich. Jung immediately began interpreting Pauli's deeply archetypal dreams,[3] and Pauli became one of the depth psychologist’s best students. Soon, he began to criticize the epistemology of Jung’s theory scientifically, and this contributed to a certain clarification of the latter’s thoughts, especially about the concept of synchronicity. A great many of these discussions are documented in the Pauli/Jung letters, today published as Atom and Archetype. Jung's elaborate analysis of more than 400 of Pauli's dreams is documented in Psychology and Alchemy.

Count Iblis (talk) 23:19, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

That section also appears to be badly sourced. It may be that the opinions are based from [2] which seems to limit mysticism to Pauli, it seems it should also be attributed to the historian Juan Miguel Marin. IRWolfie- (talk) 22:34, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

Lead at Feynman diagram

What do folks here think about the new lead at Feynman diagram, after these edits by User:Mal? I think it is clearly not an improvement. The style is simply unacceptable for an encyclopedia article. The question is, do we revert this, or is there something worth keeping? (I'm also concerned with some of User:Mal's other edits. He has been doing similar things to the leads of other articles.) Sławomir Biały (talk) 10:15, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

I'm also a little worried about the changes to Introduction to gauge theory ([3]). This is also a candidate for a reversion, except the earlier revision was also not very good. Sławomir Biały (talk) 10:19, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

I have reverted to previous version which was a bit better. Xxanthippe (talk) 12:04, 16 January 2012 (UTC).

A perennial problem with technical articles in Wikipedia is reasonable articles being degraded by well-meaning but incompetent editors. This is harder to deal with than vandalism because they require excruciating explanations of why their contributions are undesired. A former example was User:Logger9 who eventually got blocked, but I don't expect this case will go to that extreme. Xxanthippe (talk) 22:27, 16 January 2012 (UTC).

It seems what the editor is trying to do is to make the article more accessible; while this may be laudable the major issue is that they have also removed technical information as well. It may be good to inform the editor also so they can improve their edits. IRWolfie- (talk) 10:23, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

There is an exchange on my talk page. An editor who thinks that this [4] is a suitable source for a physics article needs to have his edits scrutinized. Xxanthippe (talk) 05:14, 19 January 2012 (UTC).

LARES_(satellite)

FYI, there is a notice at WT:AST about questionable editing of this satellite relativity experiment. 76.65.128.132 (talk) 04:04, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Requested move regarding work and work (physics)

Thermodynamical work → Thermodynamic work – Both wikt:thermodynamic and wikt:thermodynamical are adjectives, but Thermodynamic is more commonly used. thermodynamic work gets 49,000 google hits, thermodynamical 1700. Request move per WP:COMMONNAME Nobody Ent 17:58, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

If you're going to rename it, it should be called Work (thermodynamics) (which now redirects to it), in order to correspond with Work (physics), and so on, and then you can say it's also called thermodynamic work or (less commonly) thermodynamical work in the lede. And by the way, I see that some busybody has moved work (physics) to mechanical work without any discussion, and now wants to change THIS article to correspond. Wrong! The key thing about all this stuff is that it's kinds of work. It really should be work (electrical) not electrical work. So now it's all screwed up. Next you're going to want Planet Mercury instead of Mercury (planet). Come on. Are there comments from anybody else about this silliness? SBHarris 19:35, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

First, "Planet Mercury" is grammatically sub-standard, unlike "thermodynamic(al) work". Second, the name "work (thermodynamics)" may give a clue that in thermodynamics the term "work" means something different than work (physics), which is not true. IMHO both work (physics) and thermodynamical work are OK – "work" is a physical term, and thermodynamical work is merely its application to thermodynamics. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 19:48, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

First, "the planet Mercury" is not grammatically substandard, but is in fact the standard in situations where you can't tell by context what is being talked about ("let me show you a cool picture of Mercury," says the Professor of Ancient Greek Art...). The only reason we leave out "The" in article titles is by policy. Second, work is NOT a "physical term" and thermodynamic work is NOT merely its application to thermodynamics. This is one reason why Work should go directly to a dab page, even as Mercury does now. Even work in physics is not work in thermodynamics, since work in physics is force*distance, whereas work in thermodynamics includes potentials where no physical work is involved. For example, when I change out the dead battery in your car for a fresh one, I perform thermodynamic work on the car (thus increasing its internal energy), but no physical or mechanical work. Same when I fill the tank, in fact. See the problem? SBHarris 21:37, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

According to the relevant policy on article naming, parentheses are recommended for disambiguation unless there is some distinct name that can be used (i. e., a term that doesn't include "work" in it). I don't agree that work (thermodynamics) would confuse readers. RockMagnetist (talk) 20:06, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

RockMagnetist, please, point exactly to a phrase is some guideline, which gives to parenthetical disambiguation a priority over natural one. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 20:32, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

I've moved Work (physics) back to its old title, as there did not appear to be consensus for the move, or any discussion of the move (either at that page or at the other moved pages, beyond a 2004 thread where it was objected to). I left a polite note on the editor's talk page inviting them to join the discussion here and explaining how move-consensus and the WP:RM process work.

At least two other pages were renamed without discussion or consensus. Someone else can handle moving them back, and updating the disambiguation headers on all of the affected pages, because I have to go to work right now. --Christopher Thomas (talk) 20:31, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

Sorry. I didn't know that enwiki has so strict policies about moving pages. Fyi: I summarized my opinion about the topic here: Talk:Thermodynamical work#Requested move. Kontos (talk) 20:44, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

Nobody's faulting you for taking a good-faith action; it just turned out to be one that was contested, and what's happening now is the normal process of discussion sorting out what, if anything, consensus is about moving/not moving the pages.

For non-controversial moves, a full discussion isn't generally needed. It's just strongly encouraged for pages that are either linked from a lot of places, or where the move may be disputed. The full process for situations like that is to start a discussion thread (which you've done), and stick a "proposed move" template in appropriate locations (which makes it clear to people watching affected pages that a move proposal is underway, and adds the pages to an automatically-generated list of proposed moves so that more editors can be made aware of the proposal). After the discussion has been open long enough (usually at least a week, or until the thread dies down, whichever is longest), the discussion gets closed and the pages are either moved or not moved. --Christopher Thomas (talk) 00:03, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

• I propose we work on the whole work problem by making some changes. I think that first, we should just direct work directly to a dab page, as we do mercury. This page has physics concepts first, and ordinary labor and social concepts later. The various kinds of work as defined in science are work (physics) which is force-times-distance, for any of the basic forces of nature, work (mechanical) which is not universally defined, but tends to be force*distance, where the "force" is a contact force (object-object push, friction, etc), work (electrical) where the force is the long-range static electric force, or an electrical field on a conductor, work (thermodynamics), where includes not only force-times-distance work, but also includes any method of increasing the internal energy of an object or system other than heating (including adding chemical potential and even massive particles to a system), and so on.

  These are all different concepts and need their own pages. In the work (physics) page, you can mention that any force times distance type work qualifies, and then go through the 4 forces, with things like work (electrical) as sub/main articles. But work (thermodynamics) is not a variety of work (physics)-- rather it is a broader concept, which subsumes work (physics), so a mention of both will have to be made in both articles. SBHarris 18:05, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

If there are no strong objections, on Monday I'm going to start this process off, by redirecting work to the work (disambiguation) page. SBHarris 20:30, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

A reorganization of some kind does sound like a good idea, and I trust your judgement about how to do it - but it's probably still a good idea to tag all of the pages involved with appropriate templates (or at least stick a note on their talk pages) pointing to this thread for centralized discussion. This would change a lot of pages that are heavily linked, so the topic really should get a few more eyes on it before jumping in and reorganizing it. If nobody comments within a week, you're free to do pretty much whatever you like. If others do comment, then it's still a win, because they'll probably have useful suggestions. --Christopher Thomas (talk) 22:53, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Isn't this work already a disambig page? Nobody Ent 00:31, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Sure looks that way to me. RockMagnetist (talk) 00:47, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

You are right-- I don't know where I got that impression. Okay, I've done some work on the dab page. Remaining to be done is to rename Electrical work to Work (electrical). Also, there's a problem with mechanical work which now redirects to work (physics), and that is not quite right. Many texts do define mechanical work as force*distance, which would make it synonymous with work (physics), but others define mechanical work as work done by a mechanical force-- which isn't an article on WP, but often in texts means a contact force, i.e., not an electrical field or gravitational field force. That is ultimately why electrical work and work (physics) now have separate articles-- work (physics) is now synonymous with mechanical work, which in many texts is not considered the same thing as electrical work.

However, I think the solution is to leave the mechanical work direct to work (physics) alone, and explain in that article that sometimes "mechanical work" has a connotation of work done by "mechanical" forces (but not always). SBHarris 02:19, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Bargmann-Wigner equations for any-spin particles?????????????

Copied from talk:Relativistic wave equations

I think they are found here: [5]. There should be an article on this (Bargmann-Wigner equations), but I don't understand these equations yet - else of course I would write about them...--Maschen (talk) 21:07, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

RM

Members of this project may be interested in participating in a requested move at Talk:Angular momentum operator. Cheers, Jenks24 (talk) 06:29, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Merge normalizable wave function into wave function

See here. Opinions? The current consensus is to merge, only between two users (including me) who have recently looked at the article (not many else).-- F = q(E + v × B) 15:26, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Following policy on proposing mergers, I have tagged the articles and started a discussion on talk:Wave function. RockMagnetist (talk) 16:36, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

That does not seem to be policy, it's not a guideline either, just a suggestion. When merging you can be bold. WP:MM IRWolfie- (talk) 16:47, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

True. Bold may be appropriate here. RockMagnetist (talk) 17:13, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Now I realize there is 4 (including me) for a merge. Should we just do it?-- F = q(E + v × B) 17:08, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Very well. Here I go.-- F = q(E + v × B) 17:20, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Are you going to copy any content from Normalizable wave function into Wave function? RockMagnetist (talk) 17:47, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Doing it now - just about to finish. The normalization invariance, the example (trimmed down), and the categories and external links. you'll see in a moment.-- F = q(E + v × B) 18:02, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Done. Opinions?-- F = q(E + v × B) 18:08, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Good job. Unless normalizable wave function as a section one day grows to such length as to suggest a subarticle per WP:SS, that takes care of the problem. SBHarris 20:23, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

It shouldn't. Anyway, as always - thanks to everyone for feedback. =)-- F = q(E + v × B) 21:00, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Quantum state...

See here. Could someone who knows QM + QFT inside out clarify the first couple of sections? They are not very clear, and one bit has naturally been tagged...-- F = q(E + v × B) 21:38, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Help for correction

Copied from Wikipedia:Help desk#Help for correction

I wrote a detailed article about “Dielectric absorption”, please see under User:Elcap/Dielectric absorption This article was translated from German, but I am not an expert of the English language. If someone please can help and correct my mistakes I would be very glad. --Elcap (talk) 15:31, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

I'll have a look now.-- F = q(E + v × B) 22:38, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

Overall is fine. Just a few tweaks you can see here: [6] =) It seems another editor has looked at the article, see the edit history (you knew that anyway, just wanted to include this fact for completeness).-- F = q(E + v × B) 23:07, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

Help may be needed by an administrator to merge this with the existing stub article Dielectric absorption since the revision histories must also be merged. JRSpriggs (talk) 08:08, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

Hi SpinningSpark, first, thank you so much for editing, you spend a lot of time for my draft.

Hi JRSpriggs, how can I arrange that an administrator can help? --Elcap (talk) 09:59, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

If you know someone listed at Category:Wikipedia administrators, then ask him for help. JRSpriggs (talk) 11:09, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

Alternatively it could be merged with the edit summary detailing the origin of all text? IRWolfie- (talk) 11:16, 24 January 2012 (UTC)