Talk:Thulium/Archive 1

Notable characteristics
how about creating a section called "Notable characteristics" or something like that and moving this data to it(frm the introduction). "It is an easily workable metal with a bright silvery-gray luster and can be cut by a knife. It has some corrosion resistance in dry air and good ductility. Naturally occurring thulium is made entirely of the stable isotope Tm-169."--Abhishek Jacob (talk) 07:31, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Fiction
I suggest removing the text "Thulium is used as interstellar money in the book Illegal Aliens (authors Nick Polotta and Phil Foglio), due to its rarity and lack of other uses.♥" reinserted by user:Tanada. I have reverted him on this reinsert once and ask community opinion before reverting him again. Reason for removal - offensive ("lack of other uses.♥") and hardly relevant to this article (we can't list here what anyone says about Thulium). Materialscientist (talk) 23:24, 5 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Who exactly is being offended by "lack of other uses" ? I see no harm in including a Fiction or In popular culture section. I am surprised that tritium doesn't mention Spider-Man 2. However, such a section that only contains one unsourced sentence probably doesn't belong in the article. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 03:18, 6 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I, who "found" at least three realistic applications of thullium (see article) :-).Materialscientist (talk) 03:32, 6 July 2009 (UTC)


 * I struggled with whether or not to have an 'In popular culture' section in plutonium (now FA) but ultimately decided against it. I did this due to just how unwieldy, open-ended and list-like it would become; it is simply not possible to write a coherent section made up of trivial sentences about one-off uses of that metal as a plot element in fiction. A themed approach would be needed, such as in Mars. I'm not certain if that could even be done with plutonium so I'm even less convinced it can be done with thulium. The WikiProject has also not figured out how to deal with this type of info for elements yet. WP:TRIVIAL may be an applicable guideline. --mav (talk) 14:21, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

Removed as unsourced trivia. Vsmith (talk) 21:36, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

File:Thulium sublimed dendritic and 1cm3 cube.jpg to appear as POTD soon
Hello! This is a note to let the editors of this article know that File:Thulium sublimed dendritic and 1cm3 cube.jpg will be appearing as picture of the day on October 8, 2012. You can view and edit the POTD blurb at Template:POTD/2012-10-08. If this article needs any attention or maintenance, it would be preferable if that could be done before its appearance on the Main Page so Wikipedia doesn't look bad. :) Thanks! — howcheng  {chat} 18:08, 5 October 2012 (UTC)

Note (2005)
Article changed over to new WikiProject Elements format by mav 03:03, 15 Dec 2003 (UTC). Elementbox converted 11:54, 10 July 2005 by Femto (previous revision was that of 13:23, 9 July 2005). 9 July 2005

Citations needed
Just doing a preliminary search of the web I can't find any commercially available portable x-ray source that uses thulium as it's x-ray source. Almost all 'portable' devices produce x-rays by simply using electrical power. May be it needs to say 'potential use'. It just seems a bit of myth that thulium is used in this way even routinely. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.22.239.98 (talk) 00:05, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

Information Sources
Some of the text in this entry was rewritten from Los Alamos National Laboratory - Thulium. Data for the table was obtained from the sources listed on the subject page and WikiProject Elements but was reformatted and converted into SI units. --

Talk
What is the element Thulium used for?And what two places that you would use Thulium in your everyday life?

Can someone explain the "History" section here? When referring to the "British king", are we talking about a British researcher named King or the actual King of Great Britain?
 * Was vandalism, reverted. Femto 15:17, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

I've always been bothered by the description "can be cut by a knife" in the physical properties. A number of sources said this, but it just isn't true. It can be scratched with a knife, but I defy anyone to cut it (like one can cut potassium or sodium.) I spent many hours in graduate school reducing thulium metal pieces to powder, nothing short of a steel flat bastard file would work, and then only when clamped down strongly. Also, US patent 6887824, it finally issued in 2005. I'll let someone else decide if a change is warranted.
 * Agree. Probably a copy-paste blunder. Materialscientist (talk) 23:27, 12 September 2009 (UTC)

Orphaned references in Thulium
I check pages listed in Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting to try to fix reference errors. One of the things I do is look for content for orphaned references in wikilinked articles. I have found content for some of Thulium's orphans, the problem is that I found more than one version. I can't determine which (if any) is correct for this article, so I am asking for a sentient editor to look it over and copy the correct ref content into this article.

Reference named "Emsley": From Ruthenium:  From Pnictogen:  From Tellurium:  From Chromium:  From Tantalum:  From Astatine:  From Osmium:  From History of the periodic table: </li> <li>From Rhenium: </li> <li>From Erbium: </li> <li>From Protactinium: </li> <li>From Iridium: </li> <li>From Cerium: </li> <li>From Actinide: </li> </ul>

I apologize if any of the above are effectively identical; I am just a simple computer program, so I can't determine whether minor differences are significant or not. AnomieBOT ⚡ 12:21, 21 March 2013 (UTC)