Talk:Condensed matter physics/GA1

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Reviewer: Stigmatella aurantiaca (talk · contribs) 04:54, 9 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Starting review[edit]

Hi, I'm starting to look the article over. This is a pretty huge subject that you're trying to cover in not so many words here! You've made a heroic effort to be comprehensive even if it's meant that you haven't been able to spare more than a few words for any one topic. I'll try to take that goal of yours into account in my review. The alternative, of course, is to focus on the most important topics at the expense of neglecting some. Both approaches have good and bad points to them. Stigmatella aurantiaca (talk) 04:54, 9 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

First read comments[edit]

Quickfail Criteria
Description Rating
The article completely lacks reliable sources. OK
The topic is treated in an obviously non-neutral way. OK
There are cleanup banners that are obviously still valid OK
The article is or has been the subject of ongoing or recent, unresolved edit wars. OK
The article specifically concerns a rapidly unfolding current event with a definite endpoint. OK
The article contains significant close paraphrasing or copyright violations. OK

I note a certain choppiness in tone that comes from attempting to cover a huge topic in the space of an encyclopedia article that can be read in, say, fifteen minutes or so. I suspect that many of my criticisms will center around your attempting to compress too much information into too few words. Stigmatella aurantiaca (talk) 06:26, 9 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Detailed comments[edit]

General comments: Trying to cover, even in passing, all the important topics in such a vast field as condensed matter physics is impossible within a 34,000 character essay, so your choice of what to cover and what not to cover has necessarily been somewhat idiosyncratic. However, even after making allowances for the impossibility of covering everything in even a superficial fashion, I have issues on the adequacy of your coverage. As I interpret the article, the organizational principle underlying the different sections is as follows:

  1. Introduction – A high level description of the field that should be understandable by any literate reader.
  2. History – A quick, broad but necessarily shallow survey of the field presented in more or less chronological fashion, identifying major contributions to the subject. Since the beginning of this year, this and the following two sections have seen considerable growth. The principal editor of this History section appears to have intended it for the intelligent general reader, and has largely succeeded.
  3. Theoretical – Making no pretense at being comprehensive in scope, this appears to be an idiosyncratic selection of important topics in the theoretical underpinnings of the subject. The demands made on the reader appear to be somewhat greater than that of the History section.
  4. Experimental – Making no pretense at being comprehensive in scope, this is appears to be an idiosyncratic selection of major experimental achievements. The demands made on the reader appear to be somewhat greater than that of the History section.
  5. Applications – A quick, general survey showing the scope of condensed matter physics.

Without covering any subject in depth, your intent for this article appears mostly to be to provide a doorway to the subject by providing a directed guide to other articles on Wikipedia that cover selected topics in greater detail. It is more than a bare catalog of links, but less than a fully comprehensive review.

My biggest problem is the History section. As a broad survey, it misses a lot.

I am OK with the Theoretical and Experimental sections being somewhat pick-and-choose in their coverage. But the History section misses too much.

I don't blame you for missing a lot. However, in the following, I point out some topics whose omission seem inexcusable. It is possible that you will judge that some of the missing topics are too technical for the History section. If that is truly so, then they have to be covered in one of the later sections. Yes, several of the subjects that I note as missing in History are covered in later sections. Just see if there is a way to mention these topics in History (in context, of course) before covering them in greater detail later.

The Introduction needs to be written, and has been written, so that all literate readers are able to read and understand it. The History section has been written, and should continue to be be written so that most readers can get through it with a bit of work. These two sections are the most important, and need to fulfill their missions to the fullest extent possible. In the following, I give a number of recommendations for expanding the History section. You should be careful not to increase the technical burden on the reader in making your additions. Push any hard stuff into the Theoretical and Experimental sections.

Given that many readers will give up when they reach the Theoretical and Experimental sections, you should consider moving and re-writing the Applications section so that it stands as the third easy-to-read section after History.

Thank you very much for spending time reviewing this article. You have obviously put in considerable effort identifying problems and suggesting improvements. I'll try to go over all the points over the next few days, and respond accordingly. Thanks once again, SPat talk 04:24, 12 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Figures[edit]

I find disturbing the fact that many of the chosen figures appear to serve purely a decorative purpose, without being integrated into the text or having sufficient explanation to give the reader understanding.

  • The opening figure illustrating quantum phase transitions is about as representative of the field as you can get, but you make no reference to the figure anywhere in the text, nor is there any caption.
Comment: So this is hard one, I don't really have a good idea for what should go along with the intro text. The entire box is from the Template:Condensed matter physics and has been there since before I started working on it. I've only left it there for lack of a better idea. As for the image, I just changed the one in the template. SPat talk
  • Serious error: The illustrated transistor is a point contact transistor, not a field-effect transistor.
 Done (oops!) SPat talk
  • I am not sure that the diffraction pattern of a protein crystal, can currently be considered as illustrative of a branch of condensed matter physics. It is certainly a wonderful application resulting from fundamental research in the field, and somewhere you should indicate that.
Comment: Um... the main reason I used the protein picture is because it is one of the few good XRD images we have on commons. It's just to illustrate an actual X-ray diffraction scan. SPat talk
  • Bose-Einstein condensate. This is a very pretty picture, but couldn't you explain which scans represent the "before" and "after" states?
plus Added SPat talk
  • Have the nano-gears actually been realized in practice? Or is this all just computer graphics?
plus Added SPat talk

Introduction[edit]

  • "Condensed matter physicists seek to understand the behavior of these phases by using well-established physical laws, in particular, these include the laws of quantum mechanics, electromagnetism and statistical mechanics."
by using => in terms of
Run-on sentence. Split into two sentences.
 Done Better? SPat talk

History[edit]

  • Section comment 1: This section reads as a chronological recitation of events without a theme. To tie things together, you need a theme, or themes. I suggest the following:
  1. The central division between the classical and modern period in condensed matter physics came from the advent of quantum mechanics.
  2. New techniques of measurement (such as AFM, angle-resolved photoemission, electron scattering, Auger spectroscopy, neutron reflectometry, etc.), and advancing degrees of control in experimental manipulations and over compositions of materials (such as ultra-high vacuum technology, zone refining and molecular beam epitaxy, optical lattices) have also played vital roles in the development of this field.
I see your point - I'm setting up a rough outline along which it should be easier to build content. Will do over next couple of days. SPat talk 06:28, 13 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Section comment 2: It may be OK for this History section to be shallow. There is simply too much to cover. But there is no excuse for it not to at least attempt to be BROAD, given that it is a source of links to other Wikipedia articles giving detailed coverage. There are currently too many omissions.
  • In other words, History should be where you present all of the important topics and themes in historical context, and the Theoretical and Experimental sections should be where you expand upon selected areas.
  • "and hence concluded that the atoms in Dalton's atomic theory were not indivisible as Dalton claimed, but had inner structure."
I believe that this statement rather exaggerates the sophistication of Davy's views on atomic theory. Davy considered Dalton's theory to be "rather more ingenious than important" and stated, "there is no reason to suppose that any real indestructible principle has yet been discovered." Even when presenting Dalton with the Royal Medal medal in 1826, Davy said that Dalton's theory only became useful when the atomic conjecture was ignored. I don't believe that Davy had a clear picture of atoms at all.
 Altered to make it a neutral statement. SPat talk
  • Brillion's classification of crystal symmetries deserves mention.
 Partly done I included a line about crystal classification, but I didn't find any sources crediting it to Brillouin. SPat talk
  • Sorry, sloppy memory and spelling. (Brillouin zones, wrong century.) Meant Bravais, 1845. By the way, link to Yeh, Nai-Chang (2008). "A Perspective of Frontiers in Modern Condensed Matter Physics" is bad. Stigmatella aurantiaca (talk) 14:58, 12 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • "In 1823, Micheal Faraday..."
Micheal => Michael
 Done SPat talk
plus Added but not sure if it is important enough SPat talk
  • Hall effect deserves mention
plus Added courtesy User:SrijitaK, but needs some cleanup SPat talk
  • Although you mention Drude, here and in expanded form later, you don't mention that classical theory failed to explain the resistance versus temperature relation. Lorentz also worked on this subject.
 Done SPat talk
  • You mention Onnes' achievements in cryogenics and the discovery of superconductivity, but not how this was an observation completely outside classical physics to explain.
 Done SPat talk
  • Likewise you fail to mention the theoretical failures of classical theory (Dulong–Petit law) to provide the correct expression for heat capacity in many circumstances.
  • You neglected Einstein's contributions to the problem of heat capacity. Along the way, maybe you could include mention the contributions of Debye and of Born?
  • What about von Laue and the Braggs?
  • You mention Bloch's early work, and Sommerfeld's later work on metallic conduction (neglecting Pauli for some reason), but barely give any understanding of what they did: develop a quantum-mechanical free-electron theory of metals using Fermi-Dirac statistics that explained many previously inexplicable facts. Yes, I do see that you cover this stuff in Theoretical, but that's no excuse for History not to provide any context at all.
 Done Regarding Pauli, I feel a one-word mention is enough? SPat talk
  • In the introduction you mention ferromagnetism and anti-ferromagnetism, but otherwise drop the subject completely. In this history section you make no mention of Weiss, domain theory, nor of Heisenberg's role in explaining the enormous discrepancy between the classical estimates versus measured values of the Weiss effective magnetic field. Likewise Bloch, Neel, etc. This is an enormously important field because of its connection with magnetic storage.
 Done Whew, took quite an effort to get sources there. SPat talk
 See above
  • I notice that electronic band structure is your biggest section in Theoretical. That's good, but just using the term "Band structure calculations" in History without even a brief phrase of explanation is not.
  • Uh... looking through the whole article... what happened to BCS theory???
plus Added SPat talk
  • Neutron scattering and diffraction?
  • "A variety of topics in Physics such as crystallography, metallurgy, elasticity, magnetism, etc., were treated as distinct areas, until the 1940s ... The Bell Labs (then known as the Bell Telephone Laboratories) was one of the first institutes to conduct a research program in condensed matter physics."
The entire paragraph above on nomenclature seems out of place and seems more to fit as the third paragraph of the Introduction than in the history section.
 Done That does seem better, that paragraph started out as a part of the intro actually... SPat talk
  • You skip over to high temperature superconductivity without mentioning, even briefly, many other topics of interest.
 Half done Added QHE, again courtesy User:SrijitaK. Not very sure of historical relevance of rest.
 Done Dunno how I missed that, it's a bit of a pet topic SPat talk
 Done SPat talk
 Half done Added MFT SPat talk
✗ Not done Added by User:SrijitaK, but not sure of historical significance. SPat talk

Theoretical[edit]

  • Section comment: As I mentioned before, in this section and in the Experimental section you are obviously making no pretense at trying to be comprehensive, and I'm OK with that. You obviously merely want to highlight topics that seem of special interest and to provide links.

Experimental[edit]

  • Section comment: Ditto comment, in this section and in the Theoretical section you are obviously making no pretense at trying to be comprehensive, and I'm OK with that. You obviously merely want to highlight topics that seem of special interest and to provide links

Applications[edit]

Try moving this section up. The material in this section is all pretty easy reading. You need to let readers get to this interesting material before their eyes glaze over when they hit Theory and Experiment.

I agree about this being a more eye-catchy section, but I think it does need to be at the end to maintain a logical flow. SPat talk

What I need to see for GA[edit]

I need to see the History section providing a broad and accessible introduction to the major concepts of condensed matter physics, presenting the concepts in both historical and scientific context and tied together with a solid theme. Difficult concepts may be pushed out to the other sections, but try to maintain as much in History as possible. Given the amount that has been overlooked in History (even though I do see that in a number of cases the subjects are covered later), I anticipate at least a doubling or tripling in size of the History section would be necessary. Condensed matter physics currently stands at 34,000 characters, 4,000 of which is History. It should not be at all hard to expand just the History so that the article stands at 38,000–42,000 characters. - Stigmatella aurantiaca (talk) 02:13, 12 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Your additions are looking pretty good so far! Stigmatella aurantiaca (talk) 20:03, 13 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

General comment regarding history section: I've tried to include as many of your suggestions as I could. For most of those that I haven't, I feel they would be hard to fit into context within the "overall" history of the subject. If and when someone writes a dedicated article for History of condensed matter physics, that would be the place for comprehensive coverage. Do you think that's ok? I'd be happy to discuss further, SPat talk 05:33, 15 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Condensed matter physics is such a vast field that it couldn't be covered adequately in an article four times as large. You've done a great job providing a starting point for people to follow up on the subject. Your interests and biases happen to be somewhat different than mine, but that's OK. Over the years, I expect that you and other editors will continue to improve this article, taking it far beyond its current state. Meanwhile, GA for you and your fellow editors! Stigmatella aurantiaca (talk) 00:25, 17 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
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