Talk:David Spence (rubber chemistry)

David Spence peer review 1
Overall, the authors did have done a nice job in starting the page. They have included interesting information about David Spence and highlighted the important aspects of his career. I believe the authors did a good amount of research for the first draft, particularly in the chemistry details. The article might benefit from some more biographical information if it is available. The figures were informative, but could use some editing work. In general, the authors did a nice job presenting the life and accomplishments of a chemist who played a prominent role in U.S. history. Some moderate editing work is need, but nice job on the content and integrating biography, chemistry, and history into a cohesive and interesting article!

Content
Overall, the page looks good. It is readable and contains interesting and relevant information about David Spence. The length of each section is good and goes into a nice amount of detail with out being to technical or overwhelming. It is definitely readable by a non-expert. Each paragraph contains good and relevant information and adds to the overall content of the page.

The introductory section is pretty short, but I believe it is very good at immediately identifying who David Spence is and why he is important in the field of chemistry. It highlights the major achievements in his career. The one thing I might add is a brief explanation of exactly why the Charles Goodyear Medal is so important/prestigious. I would also suggest adding a citation at the end of the introduction and in the third paragraph of the Biography section for Spence winning the Charles Goodyear Medal. Here is a link from the ACS Rubber Division that lists all past recipients: http://www.rubber.org/uploads/276791389814615.pdf

Depending on how much biographical information you can find, you might consider splitting the biography section into two sections: 1) Early life and education; and 2) Professional career. This way you can highlight his early life and academic training separately from his professional accomplishments. The professional career section wouldn’t need to discuss the specific of his science in detail (you do that later), but would present his major career accomplishments. However, you would have to add enough content to each section to justify splitting up the biography.

In “Organic accelerators” I would try to include more information about exactly how Spence discovered p-aminodimethylaniline and exactly why it is a better accelerator. Also the formatting currently looks awkward with only one long line hanging out at the bottom of the paragraph. I imagine this will get fixed when editing the paragraph. Other than that, I believe the content is scientific content is relevant and interesting. The authors did a good job explaining what Spence accomplished and putting it in context of exactly why it was important, particularly through the lens of WWII. The content appears to be original and does not appear duplicative of other content on Wikipedia.

There are a few typos and awkward sentence structures throughout the page, particularly in the “Scientific career” section (e.g. “…improve the properties of lower quality rubber rubber.”) Make sure to proofread carefully as there are a number of missing or extra words in various sentences throughout. Some linking to other Wikipedia articles was done, but I would suggest adding more. Many of the compounds and terms used do have pages on Wikipedia, such as American Chemical Society, Charles Goodyear Medal, tensile strength, vulcanization, and even rubber. Also, make sure to link to pages that actually exist (“Parthenium argentarium” is currently a red link).

On a very minor, nit-picky note, Wikipedia style is to only capitalize the first work in section titles. So it would be “Development of guayule as a rubber alternative.”

Figures
I would say that the weakest point of the page is the figures. Overall, the content of all of the figures is excellent and compliments the text, but I believe they could use some formatting work. The reaction schemes need to be larger: I would suggest centering them (include |center| in the code) and scale them up to the larger and more easily read. The schemes are really interesting and important, and I think they should be highlighted in the middle of the page. Also, try to be consistent with both font and font size. Before uploading the images I would just make sure that the font size is consistent throughout the entire scheme. In the schemes under “Novel Vulcanization and Dyeing Processes” the arrows are too large relative to the compounds. Also, a few of them are not long enough. I would suggest just using one of the smaller arrow options in ChemDraw. In all of the schemes, make sure all the components are centered relative to each other and distributed appropriately. I would also suggest adding references to the captions in the schemes.

I am also confused by the scheme of the isoprene synthesis. Are i), ii), iii), etc. subsequent steps in the reaction? Or are all of those compounds being converted to the isoprene monomer? You mention 2,3-dimethylbut-1-en-3-o in the text, but make sure to highlight what exactly that is in the figure. Either some reworking or clarification in the caption of the scheme is needed.

Overall presentation
Overall, I would say the article is very good and only need a few minor adjustments, particularly in the figures and schemes. The authors did a great job of explaining David Spence’s accomplishments both scientifically and culturally. It was easy to understand the importance of Spence’s work, and, importantly, I believe the chemistry details would be accessible to a non-expert. Some minor suggestions regarding organization were provided, but the major areas that need some editing are the figures/schemes and references. Most of the work that needs to be done is simple reformatting and resizing. A thorough proofread for grammar/spelling should also be done. Finally, the references need to be checked for accuracy. In general, an excellent start! RLM0518 (talk) 02:23, 28 February 2014 (UTC)

Content
The introductory section is accessible for non-experts, but it is very brief (only 3 sentences). It could be expanded by give more detail for about the extracting of rubber from plants and the improvements to rubber processing. For example, they could mention his work with extracting rubber from Guayale, developing synthetic isoprene, and developing vulcanization and dying processes. The phrase “war effort” is too vague. They should specify World Wars I and II. It may be more effective to combine the introduction and biography.

The “biography” section provides interesting information about Spence’s career. If possible, adding a few sentences about his early life would be interesting (currently it begins with his PhD.) The “scientific career” section provides interesting information about Spence’s contributions to rubber chemistry. Dividing this into several sub-sections makes it easy to read. More information about vulcanization would improve this page. While there is extensive detail about accelerators, there is little description of the chemistry of vulcanization and why it improves rubber. There is a Wikipedia article on this topic, so a brief explanation and link to the article would be sufficient. The scheme depicting vulcanization in the last sub-section should be moved to the first section, because it explains the role of para-aminodimethylaniline. There are also several figures which contradict the text—this is discussed in more detail in the following section, but the authors should be careful that the structures they depict correspond to the compounds described in the text.

The article contains some links to other Wikipedia pages, but should include more. It should be linked to pages for the following, as well as any other concepts that have pages: rubber, American Chemical Society, Goodrich company, vulcanization, aniline, para-dimethylaniline, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Goodyear, Firestone, and azo dyes. The link for the Charles Goodyear Medal is given, but it should be provided the first time the medal is mentioned. The highlighted examples are appropriate. They are useful and informative without excessive detail. The content is not duplicative of other content on Wikipedia.

Figures
The figures are original. Most are from Chemdraw, and the image of the plant is from Wikimedia commons.

Most of the chemdraw figures are clear and helpful. Larger captions would be useful for the sulfur vulcanization scheme. Smaller arrows would also be better in the anaerobic scheme. The synthetic route for isoprene shows the synthesis of similar structure, but missing the methyl group and with different substitution. If the synthetic monomer is different from the naturally occurring repeat unit, this should be addressed in the text. The anaerobic vulcanization scheme should include a step for the formation of phenyl radicals and carbon dioxide, after the initial cleavage of the initiator, as described in lecture.

The structure of polyisoprene drawn in both vulcanization schemes does not show the correct repeat unit. Parentheses should be used to indicate the correct unit. Furthermore, the squiggly arrows in the schemes are also confusing—are they meant to indicate that the polymer could be cis or trans? According to the Wikipedia page on isoprene, natural rubber primarily consists of cis-polyisoprene, so it may be better to depict the polymer in this conformation. It would be helpful to add a figure showing the azo dyes mentioned in the dyeing section. Even a generic structure would be useful to illustrate this.

Presentation
Overall, the layout and format are logical and clear. The figures are helpful in illustrating the chemistry described in the text. The format, especially the division into sub-topics, makes the article easy to follow. The scientific content is interesting and informative but not overly technical. The main flaws of the article are the many grammatical errors and typos, as well as general wordiness. These are listed below, although it is possible there are more I didn’t find. While most of the article sounds very professional, there are some places where wording should be changed. In addition to pointing out spelling and grammatical errors, I have tried to point out several overly wordy sentences and give examples of how they could be rewritten to be clearer and more concise.

General:

-Inconsistent spelling of Guayule/Gauyule

- It is not necessary to add commas after the phrase “such as”

- the article switches between referring to the subject as Dr. Spence and Dr. David Spence. I think it would be correct to give his full name and degree at the beginning, and then refer to him simply as Spence.

-Latin names of plants should be italicized

Typos and grammatical errors in each section:

--Organic accelerators section:

Units should be given as psi, not spelled out as pounds per square inch.

150$ per pound should be written $150/lb

“Even though these additives improved the strength and processibility of rubber, novel addition would shortly be discovered that vastly improved the processibility of the rubber, while preserving a desirable tensile strength greater then 2800psi.”--This sentence is not necessary—it provides very little scientific information and should be shortened and combined with following sentence.

--Development of Gauyule section:

"that the both the mass of the latex"—the “the” after “that” should be removed

--Synthetic production of isoprene:

commisioned should be commissioned

capitalize American

use the % symbol instead of writing “6 percent”

Missing words before “to supply”: Even though President Franklin D. Roosevelt at the time stockpiled roughly 1 million tons of rubber to supply an annual US consumption rate of 600 thousand tons of rubber.

Therefore a additional rubber supplies would need to be secured in order to avert the crisis of a rubber shortage..—a should be an

---capitalization, spelling and missing word errors: In order to quickly produce replace the dwindling national rubber supply, President Roosevelt COMMISSIONED the American rubber and petroleum industries to quickly design and implement A synthetic rubber replacement.

---subject/verb disagreement, and overly wordy sentence: The primary challenge to the production of synthetic rubber was to either synthetically produce the isoprene, or combine multiple monomers to produce a synthetic substitute for rubber that contained the desirable characteristics. Rewritten example: The goal of synthetic rubber production was to synthesize isoprene, or to synthesize polymers with the characteristics of rubber by combining multiple monomers.

This section contained many overly wordy sentences. I have given examples of how a few sentences could be re-written to be more concise, and I would recommend the authors edit the whole page to avoid unnecessary wordiness.

Rewording examples:

Original: Thus a rapid expansion of the petroleum and rubber industry ensued in order to secure a novel source of synthetic rubber to prevent this vulnerability in national security from becoming crippling in the upcoming war.

More concise: To avoid the vulnerability of a wartime rubber shortage, the petroleum and rubber industries rapidly expanded and explored novel sources of synthetic rubber.

Original: Dr. David Spence along with a numerous other rubber scientists, and their respective companies including; Goodyear, Firestone, Goodrich, and New Jersey Standard, joined together under a patent sharing agreement to solve the rubber shortage.

More concise: To solve the rubber shortage, Spence joined a patent sharing agreement with scientists from Goodyear, Firestone, Goodrich, and New Jersey Standard.

Original: In order to produce isoprene 2,3 dimethylbut-1-en-3-ol was reacted with glacial acetic acid at high temperatures and pressures in order to dehydrate the alcohol to form isoprene.

More concise: Isoprene was produced by dehydration of 2,3-dimethylbut-1-en-3-ol, using glacial acetic acid at high temperatures and pressure.

--Development of novel vulcanization section:

The first sentence sounds very awkward— would read better as “…Spence altered processes for vulcanization and application of colored dyes to rubber”

This sentence is missing an “is” and a period at the end “Prior to Dr. Spence's novel method to apply dyes the dyes were applied during the processing of rubber, however this method expensive and limiting, and limiting as few dyes could withstand the high temperatures and pressures of the vulcanization process”

This sentence seems to be missing its end: “By submerging the rubber products in an adsorbent bath of 2% amine dye, sodium hydrate, sodium chloride, and sulfuric acid.” 540f13gsi (talk) 13:57, 28 February 2014 (UTC)540f13gsi

Instructor Comments
I suggest you take a look at other biography pages. For example, they often have a boxed image of the person on the right with the pertinent biographical information within the box. This feature would make a nice addition to your page. Did you try to find an image of David Spence that could be used? For example, the German Federal Archives released 100,000 photos on Wikimedia Commons - is David Spence among them? I agree with the peer reviewers on modifying your figures, particularly making them bigger. UMChemProfessor (talk) 02:33, 2 March 2014 (UTC)

Suggestions from ChemLibrarian
I agree with other reviewers that the life story part of the article can be enhanced more. A couple of pages may help you. ChemLibrarian (talk) 15:55, 3 March 2014 (UTC)
 * General style guide for biography if you haven't seen it.
 * The infobox mentioned by UMChemProfessor can be formatted as instructed here Help:Infobox . You will need InfoBox person. Help:Infobox picture tells you how to insert images in a infobox.
 * Try http://search.creativecommons.org/ with searching "David Spence" to see if you can get a picture of him under creative commons license to use.
 * Change image size and locations - look at Picture tutorial.

Response to Reviews
With specific regards to reviewer 1: The addition of a citation was made for Spence receiving a Charles Goodyear Medal. The amount of biography that can be obtained on Spence is very limited and the sources that could be found are repetitive of the others. Because of this, the biography section was left as a single unit. The organic accelerators section was edited to add more details generally, but the specific information mentioned was included to the best of our ability. Citations were also fixed and fully accounted for. Patent citations should be fixed.

With specific regards to reviewer 2: The intro was expanded slightly and reworded. The intro and the bio were not combined as his bio is not an intro to this article and should not be treated as such. Unfortunately, as with above, the bio could not be expanded further to include information about his earlier life as the information about him is limited to a few small articles that generally repeat the same information about his scientific career. However, it has now been appropriately linked. The image was not moved as it does not depict the aerobic vulcanization that was studied at the time. Links were added to topics on wikipedia.

Grammar and diction was overall fixed. The images were also improved overall for readability. Figures have been massively overhauled.

With respect to finding an image of Spence, we have tried exhaustively to find an image of him, however there are a few compounding factors: His name is not unique in his lifetime, the images are poorly documented as to which Spence it actually is. There is an image in C&EN archive that has him recieving his award, however in accordance with wikipedia guidlines, the image cannot be used as it is liscenced by the American Chemical Society and it does not appear to be in the public domain yet. Also, in the image it doesn't say which person he is and it is ambiguous who is the recipient.

The biography info box has been added to the page.

We would like to thank the reveiwers for their feedback and appreciate their input.

Tiraxxis (talk) 04:31, 14 March 2014 (UTC)