Template talk:Chembox/Archive 1

Various includes/excludes to the tables
The Thermochemistry values and symbols need to be explained somewhere. AxelBoldt 18:53 Jan 28, 2003 (UTC)


 * I've added links to standard enthalpy change of formation and created and linked to a new page standard molar entropy. Good enough? --- Tim Starling 04:12 Jan 30, 2003 (UTC)

It would be nice if a space for association or dissociation constants (in water) could be made. I may not give a darn about the enthalpy of formation of an organic acid, but if it had 2 carboxylate groups I might want to know the Kd of both. Dwmyers 15:30 Mar 3, 2003 (UTC)


 * I thought from the start that organic compounds would require a different set of properties to inorganic ones – hence the title of this page. If you want to make tables for the organic compounds, I can give you the excel spreadsheet I used to generate the current tables. It's pretty handy: it has a macro which processes a wiki text file and replaces certain tags with values from the spreadsheet, then dumps the text to the clipboard. I had been meaning to put it up on the web somewhere, but hadn't gotten around to it.


 * For the moment, though, you might want to consider adding a table to the dissociation constant article – like what I did with band gap. I don't really know much about organic chem – the last time I studied it was in high school -- Tim Starling 00:44 Mar 4, 2003 (UTC)

Short form of page for less common inorganics
I have put up a short version of an inorganic compound page, called inorganic_stylesheet1 since I note that the current template is rather intimidating. I am concerned that most people writing new pages are not going to want to spend the time to look up all of the data asked for, and I personally don't like putting up a page where most of the entries have a "?". This could get even worse if we include all of the details that a "full" page should include (see my comments in the next talk section on suggestions for the template). I have put up a sample page at samarium(III) chloride so you can see what a typical page might look like. I have put some more extended comments up at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Chemicals

Please give me your comments on inorganic_stylesheet1, either here or at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Chemicals- thanks!

If people like this, I will produce one for organics too. Walkerma 19:46, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)

After several minor changes to inorganic_stylesheet1, this seems to be a good format for inorganics. It is not quite as short as simple organic template, so I have used the word "short" instead of simple. I have now uploaded the template, but the main page for Chemical infobox is getting rather cluttered- feel free to reorganise this. I will upload a list of pages using the new short form (about 20 so far) when I get time. By the way Cacycle, I love the new simple organic template, we really needed this. Thanks! Walkerma 17:58, 31 Jan 2005 (UTC)

See discussion on Walkerma's page .Walkerma 16:50, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Chemical Infobox
I just discovered another "sister" project, compiling DATA on chemical compounds over at Wikipedia_talk:Chemical_infobox. We should keep an eye on things happening over there. Walkerma

From the various talk pages
I have reorganized the current template, you can see the new version below. I will use this new template on hydrochloric acid for a real-life example. The only row I have removed (as far as I remember) was the "pH of 10% solution". If you have suggestions please post them here. 19:24, 14 Mar 2005 Cacycle


 * Being familiar with the result on the hydrochloric acid, I would like the standar chembox to have a link back to the template:chembox page, where we can provide the disclaimer and other legalese. Additionally, this will provide us a means of automatic counting the use of this template.
 * ps. If the table below is the same as on the template page, I think it can be deleted here on this discussion page. Wim van Dorst 16:16, 2005 Apr 10 (UTC).

I removed the (double) template here, and --unanswered-- will take initiative for the chembox. Be Bold they say. Wim van Dorst 21:59, 2005 Apr 15 (UTC).

Hazardous Chemical Database
The problem I see with using this is that the pages doesn't seem to stay for very long at the same spot. Right now I wanted to look at sulfuric acid and went to http://ull.chemistry.uakron.edu/erd/chemicals/8/7116.html, given in the article, but the link was broken. That has happened a lot recently. What made it worse is that the search function there gave neither sulfuric acid nor sulphuric acid. So, is there anyone who knows any more reliable sources than HCD? Mikez 21:05, 13 Apr 2004 (UTC)


 * Correction - this time the search yielded http://ull.chemistry.uakron.edu/erd/chemicals1/8/7109.html for sulfuric acid /Mikez


 * Unfortunately the HCD people have rebuilt their database since I initially gathered the links, and most of the internal IDs have changed. Thus, the large majority of safety information links are currently broken. The data is still in there, someone just needs to find it again using their awful search engine, and fix all the links. -- Tim Starling 16:59, Apr 16, 2004 (UTC)

Why are "Standard Enthalpy of Combustion" and "Standard molar Gibbs free energy change of formation" not on the table? --OldakQuill 17:11, 29 Apr 2004 (UTC)


 * Because most inorganic compounds don't combust, and the Gibbs free energy can be calculated from the entropy and enthalpy, which are already given, using the formula:


 * &#916;G = &#916;H - T&#916;S


 * If you need to know the energy of combustion or oxidation of an inorganic compound, form a balanced equation of reactants (the compound with oxygen) and products, then find the total formation enthalpy of the products and reactants. The heat of combustion is the difference of the two. -- Tim Starling 00:31, Apr 30, 2004 (UTC)

Table frmt
Could the following be wrapped / implemented?

I think the important part is style="margin-left:1em" ... so as the text doesn't "rub up" against the tables? It does in mozilla ... thnks, reddi
 * This has been dealt with a long time ago. Wim van Dorst 21:08, 2005 Apr 16 (UTC).

Infoboxes (discussion moved from Chemistry Wikiproject)
There are a few pages I've made/heavily edited that link to organic table information that use tables inspired by the inorganic table information template. In making these, however, I came to realized that the appropriate information for any given compound varies rather heavily from compound to compound, and so the "definitive" organic table never came to pass. This is better shown by looking at a few of the pages and their tables, such as furfural, citric acid, and butadiene. Shimmin


 * I had created organic table information before I found this comment, but no regrets - it ought to exist if it's linked. I have raised it to a superset of the sold, liquid, gas, acid/base and hazardous type info. --Keith Edkins 21:54, 4 Jun 2004 (UTC)


 * I've made a template for the infobox. You can use    to add it to articles.  I merged the inorganic compound and organic compound tables into it; I think it covers everything one might be interested in.  A few fields (such as the IUPAC name) might not be needed for inorganic compounds, but everything else should probably remain the same between the two.  --Eequor 20:45, 15 Aug 2004 (UTC)

This is a new template for a chembox that is in use for medium-sized organic compounds. For a list of the about 80 articles that already use this box see Chemical infobox. Cacycle 16:44, 30 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Shall we move these discussion texts to the talk page of the Chemical infobox?. Wim van Dorst 07:54, 2005 Apr 11 (UTC).
 * I did. They're here. Wim van Dorst 21:42, 2005 Apr 12 (UTC).

Question about which box to use
There are two types of info boxes which I'll call "orange" and "new" (since I think it's newer--the info box currently shown on the project page.) I actually prefer the orange box style, and plan on making articles with that. Is there a problem with this? Can we even adopt that as the official standard? For one thing, the new box shows up poorly on some browsers (with black backgrounds in some cells), and I think color makes these articles look better. Cool Hand Luke 23:57, 24 Sep 2004 (UTC)
 * I've notice several different schemes on various articles, so I don't know exactly what new box you're talking about. I prefer and use the two-tone color scheme of the present infobox. - Centrx 20:25, 26 Sep 2004 (UTC)
 * I'm now at home on a mozilla browser and I can now tell the new one is still orange (now two-tone). On certain versions of IE, the current style looks awful: the backgrounds appear black. I'll try to tweak the template the make this problem go away. Otherwise, I do like the new style better. Cool Hand Luke  20:37, 26 Sep 2004 (UTC)
 * Is it possible this is because of some articles using colors like #FAD or #FED instead of #FFAADD or #FFEEDD ? - Centrx 20:22, 27 Sep 2004 (UTC)
 * More than possible. I fixed the template. If I happened to edit articles using just three bytes, I'll fix them too, but I'm not going out of my way to do it. Cool Hand Luke  00:48, 28 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Disclaimer and References links
Hi, guys, I added a Disclaimer and References link to all three infoboxes, linking back to the Chemicals infobox page. This was in old version of the infobox, and I liked it. Wim van Dorst 22:38, 2005 Apr 15 (UTC).

How To Use Infoboxes
Hello WikiChemists! Very basic question: How does one use these info boxes? I paste the text into the article, but am unable to edit the entries. So, I figure I'm doing something wrong. (See Lithium aluminium hydride as an example of my attempt to add an infobox.) ~K 22:15, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)

We should consider this a FAQ and display this usage-tip somewhere. Í'll try to find a proper place somewhere. Wim van Dorst 12:27, 2005 May 2 (UTC). I put it up on the Chemical infobox page itself. Wim van Dorst 08:57, 2005 May 5 (UTC).
 * Edit the chemistry article to add the infobox to
 * Type the text   on the top line
 * Save the page. Now that typed text is substituted by the actual infobox code
 * Edit the article again, and now the infobox is available for editing

Limonene template problem
User:Malcolm Farmer notes problems with using the infobox, if you look under the history of the new (and much-needed) Limonene page. If you look at the older versions of the page, you will see. Maybe we need to explain how to use these templates, because I confess I haven't worked it out properly myself, and I even wrote one! Myself, I just keep versions of each template in MS Word, and I edit them as I need to. How do others do this?


 * Hi Martin, the trick is to open the page where you want the table for editing, type, and then save the page. Upon saving the actual template table is inserted into the page. So opening the page again for editing: Presto, the full table is there! PS. Good progress you, Henry and the others are making. Wim van Dorst 20:57, 2005 Apr 23 (UTC).
 * I just inserted the chembox, added some details, and edited the text a bit. It does need quite some work, though. Wim van Dorst 22:22, 2005 Apr 23 (UTC).

FYI, I added a new Category:Terpenes and terpenoids, I didn't like them all going into organic compounds, and User:V8rik has been very busy creating Ionone, Citral, etc. Walkerma 16:57, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Thanks a lot for the explanation. With writing most of my material offline, I'd missed this, I feel so stupid! But probably a lot of newbies have the same problem, only they're afraid to ask. Walkerma 15:55, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Suggestions for the template
I have a few thoughts on editing the template, but I don't want to upset people by editing first and asking questions later. Also see my comments in the previous section on a short form.

1. A lot of thermodynamic properties are included, yet many other things are not. Is this by choice, or is it just an accident of evolution? I would definitely like to include coordination geometry for metal compounds, and possibly include a section on hydrates too. I think there should also be a link to related compounds, as they do with chemical elements- thus the page on NaCl would link to NaF, NaBr, NaI, LiCl and KCl. There are quite a few other pieces of data omitted from the template, such as dielectric constant, molar conductivity, dipole moment, viscosity, vapour pressure at STP or SATP, refractive index, lambda-max and extinction coefficient, major IR bands, 1H-NMR and 13C-NMR chemical shifts (for organics), mass spectrum information, magnetic susceptibility, magnetic moment (where appropriate), symmetry point group, basic chemical properties (besides the acidity currently included)- and these are just a few things that spring to mind! The NMR, IR and possibly MS could be links to scans of the spectra. Many of these are properties I would consider to be more important than those currently in the template- but if we put EVERYTHING in, it may be quite overwhelming- so do we need to limit what is included? If so, what goes in and what stays out?

2. Isn't specific gravity rather redundant when density is included?

3. Don't the Safety and Precautions sections really belong in an MSDS rather than here? We include a link to an MSDS in the template box, so anyone wanting serious safety information will look there (or at an external link if provided). It seems silly to clutter up much of this box with a repetition of the MSDS information. The purpose of a page on a chemical compound is to provide a summary of properties, uses, etc. of that compound, it should not try to be a watered-down MSDS. I would suggest a simple summary term like "Hazards"- and then put in simple words such as Irritant, Carcinogen, Toxic, along the lines of the Aldrich catalogue. If someone wants the full MSDS sheet they click on the link.

4. Should things like density and phase be given for STP, or should we use SATP? I think of benzene as a liquid, not a solid! I think many density values are given at temperatures other than 0 °C. Also, shouldn't the default for temperature be °C rather than K? Other than NIST, I don't know of any chemists who routinely use anything other than °C to report the majority of their information on chemical compounds- but then I am an organic chemist rather than a physical chemist!

Walkerma 20:15, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I raised some of these questions some time ago, when I was quite new to Wikipedia. I still think most of the above comments apply. Now we have more chemists active on Wikipedia, it may be time to revamp the main template- which I suspect had a lot of input from non-chemists, so it comes across to me as unusually skewed towards certain data. Can I solicit comments here? Once we have resolved the List of compounds split I would like to start wholesale editing of this main compound template. Walkerma 22:11, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)

"Short form" standard for less common inorganics
Looking at the template that we are currently developing/using- Chemical_infobox

I am concerned that it may be far too detailed for less common materials. For example, it may be perfect for methanol or sodium chloride, but the types of thing I have been submitting (such as cerium(III) chloride) frequently do not have detailed thermodynamic properties available- and even if such data are available, I may want to get a page up in a reasonable amount of time which is not filled with question marks. Bearing in mind that even some quite simple compounds such as calcium chloride do not currently have basic information, I think it would be better to get a large number of compounds entered in with reasonable pages, rather than having only a couple of dozen compounds covered in excruciating detail.

Another point on this- there are still many details omitted from the Chemical_infobox template, such as dielectric constant, molar conductivity, dipole moment, viscosity, vapour pressure at STP or NTP, refractive index, lambda-max and extinction coefficient, major IR bands, 1H-NMR and 13C-NMR chemical shifts (for organics), magnetic susceptibility, magnetic moment (where appropriate), symmetry point group, basic chemical properties (besides the acidity currently included)- and these are just a few things that spring to mind! Many of these are properties I would consider to be more important than those currently in the template- but if we put EVERYTHING in, it may be quite overwhelming!

I have also added a couple of extra comments on this at Wikipedia_talk:Chemical_infobox.

I would also like to suggest that we have some suggested section headings, such as "Chemical properties," "Uses," etc.

To that end, I have taken the liberty of putting up a short form of the template written as a regular page, called inorganic_stylesheet1. If this should be called something else, please feel free to rename it and the related image file. It was created by taking the Chemical_infobox template, chopping it down and editing it mercilessly. It will allow us to upload a lot of pages without having to spend hours tracking down molar entropy for gaseous samarium chloride. The table includes what I would consider only the bare essentials, nothing more. The idea is that in the future someone could (if they wish) upgrade this more basic page to the more detailed version. However, in most cases, most people would be delighted to find even the short form information in Wikipedia- for the majority of compounds I think it would be entirely sufficient. I have also put up a typical example, samarium(III) chloride so you can see how a typical compound might look.

Please give feedback! If people like this format, I would like to get a basic set of compounds done in this format.

Walkerma 19:42, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)

UPDATE: I have put up some pages in this format, please take a look, give comments. See lithium chloride, potassium chloride, magnesium chloride and a new page, aluminium chloride. I plan to do a few more chlorides in coming weeks as time allows.

Feb 2005- See discussion on Walkerma's page.


 * Hi, Martin, as the infobox is now up at this project page itself (after much moving around of both the box and the discussion about it), I took the liberty to strike out the misdirecting information from your text here.


 * Importantly, I'd like to fully agree with your remark that the short version of the inorganic table is by far not short enough. I'd rather like the shortiness of the organic table. Could you reduce the inorg one as much as the org one? Wim van Dorst 22:19, 2005 Apr 16 (UTC).

Thanks for the reorganisation, Wim- I know things had kind of evolved, and needed some tidying up. I like the way you've set up the talk pages (even though it looks from the above like I'm repeating myself- yes, I admit I did cut & paste some things!). I had the impression when I started that some people worked in one corner and others in another corner, with the left hand not knowing what the right was doing. I hope that the changes help to reduce this problem. I like the disclaimer text too- unobtrusive, but we're nicely covered.

As for the inorganics table, I've been very happy with it, and it only takes me about 20 minutes to fill it out, but that's because I have all of the books laid out in my home office. I can certainly come up with a very basic one, and I'll call it "simple" so it can be seen to be comparable to the organic one. I'll try to do that soon. I'd also like to make some changes to the so-called "main" template- which I don't think has been used by anyone here in over a year as far as I can tell- though the Germans seem to be using a simpler version of it. See my comments above on this page. I took a very close look at the history of the current version, and it seemed that lots of people added things to it, but no one took things away. I would like to remove much of the safety information, and replace that with a link. My impression is that I have never actually seen the current version of the "standard table" used in full by anyone (though ammonia is close)- having created a time-consuming "monster" table, this table was then abandoned by its creators! Earlier versions of the table were much more reasonable, and these are the versions you see actually in use more. I may even add one or two things- I really like the "related compounds" idea- but rest assured it should be a lot sharper overall. So unless anyone objects strongly to my suggestions here, I will start to edit the "standard" table in 2-4 weeks time, as time allows. Walkerma 03:28, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Martin, don't wait another fortnight for improvements. You have good ideas: go for it! I recommend to reduce the short inorg template by moving that related-compounds part to the big chembox template. That'll be a good step. And then I would like to propose to further reduce by moving the structure details too: that are rather difficult data to find (for people without big books on their desks. And what about moving the product name to the header field, Wim van Dorst 20:26, 2005 Apr 17 (UTC).

Odor
In my opinion the parameter "odor" should be removed, as the previous "psychological" classification of smell sensations has been shown to be obsolete and inaccurate. Also the number of primary odors is not at all clear. It can vary from at least 100 to perhaps more than 1,000. Discrete odor blindnesses have been proved to exist for many of these. For more info, see Guyton:Textbook of medical physiology, ISBN 072168677X. --Eleassar777 11:32, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * I think that's a fair point. I will be doing a major revamp of this template soon, I will take out that section.  There's also the safety issue- we discourage people from sniffing things too much unless we know they're safe.  I think the odour issue is best handled in the introductory paragraph in cases (like limonene) where it's appropriate, but for many things it's irrelevant anyway. Walkerma 14:58, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)


 * Good point. Odor is out of the template. Wim van Dorst 20:00, 2005 May 4 (UTC).

May I ask why it is still present in the infobox of e.g. the article hydrochloric acid? Does it have to be removed manually from all the articles the part of which it is? --Eleassar777 20:30, 4 May 2005 (UTC)
 * yes: all the infoboxes in all wikipages are fixed into the text. The template is only useful for starting a new infobox. If you want to replace an outdated one, you'll have to do the whole laborious work of substituting the (empty) new infobox into that wikipage, copy/re-keying/moving all numbers into the new table and finally deleting the old table. Wim van Dorst 21:35, 2005 May 4 (UTC).

New Wikipedia colour scheme: ClockWorkSoul
Hi, all. I have applied the new colour scheme ClockWorkSoul, which is generally chosen for the page-wide banner templates, to all four of the chemical infoboxes. Actually, I'm a sucker for standards, but this time I see that the dividing horizontal lines on my Unix-box come out very poorly. What do you think? Wim van Dorst 22:40, 2005 May 2 (UTC). I used the lithium aluminium hydride and dimethylsulfone as examples. Wim van Dorst 22:49, 2005 May 2 (UTC)


 * I think that scheme is fine for the inorganic pages, the colour change is fairly small. (Is it usual to take out the dividing line between the two columns? If that's the norm, I'm OK with it.)  However I think it's good to distinguish organics from inorganics, so I really like Cacycle's grey-blue version, which has become a "standard" for most organics.  I'll go with the group's overall opinion, though. Walkerma 00:13, 3 May 2005 (UTC)
 * Yes, you're right, it is not good to completely loose the dividing lines. They are not in the colour scheme per se, but a result of using styles (as per the scheme). I have added to the styles to see several important dividing lines again. Example is up at hydrochloric acid. Comments? Wim van Dorst 22:03, 2005 May 3 (UTC).

I'm pleased that you like my ClockworkSoul's Coffee Roll color scheme. Let me know if there's anything I can do to adjust or improve upon it for you. – ClockworkSoul 17:43, 4 May 2005 (UTC)

Could we reduce the number of infoboxes to three?
There is a good chembox template now, that really always should be considered for a Chemicals WikiPage. Then there are two nice and handy simple chemboxes for organic compounds and for inorganic compounds, which are for less known chemicals or for Chemicals wikipages still in a stub phase. Can we declate that enough? I'd rather remove the short inorganic for the Chemical infobox wikipage (Sorry Martin), and start using the other three for real. We can elaborate this recommendation in the text and in the WikiProject Chemicals activities much better too. Wim van Dorst 05:31, 2005 May 4 (UTC).

By the way, can someone remove odor? See discussion above. --Eleassar777 13:19, 4 May 2005 (UTC). Done. WvD.


 * I have been very busy with exams looming, but I will endeavour to rewrite the main template by Friday May 6th. I disagree that the template is good at present, there are important things missing and some silly things (like odor!) included (see ).  I don't know of any new pages that have used in the last year.  If the consensus is against the rewritten version, we can always revert it.   I like the way User:Cacycle rewrote my original "short form" so as to be flexible- you omit things that are irrelevent.  For a "standard" template this is essential, but it's not set up that way at present- I will try to make it adaptable for covalent inorganics, covalent organics, ionic inorganics, etc.  If we have something like that then I have less attachment to the short form inorganic template.  However we may decide that having an intermediate between a 5 minute table and a one hour table is a good idea- what do others think? Walkerma 15:16, 4 May 2005 (UTC)


 * Martin, to have one really good chembox template, covering everything that is necessary but in a flexible way is IMHO the target. That is then the way to go for the FA-quality chemicals wikipages. No discounting on that: if it takes an hour to do it well, so be it. It's a joint effort of thousands, so all together we can spend some time on it. And only for all the other chemicals wikipages we offer two minimal infoboxes, sort of step up to the big thing. I guess, that is what we would call a minimum below which we're talking stub-quality. No half-baked infobox suggesting that a good job is done when it isn't, really. Wim van Dorst 20:26, 2005 May 4 (UTC).


 * I did a little bit of housekeeping (archiving old discussions about things that have been already done) in this page, leaving open all discussions about the content of the undefined template. On the projectpage itself I did similar housekeeping, e.g., included the FAQ about How to use templates. To not push you too hard, I refrained from putting your May 6 target for the Chembox update on that page too, but of course you're free to add it as a personal reminder. ;-). I'm looking forward to the update, which I hope will spur things on quite a bit. Wim van Dorst 13:01, 2005 May 5 (UTC).


 * I have put up my draft version on my user page, please take a look. Walkerma 21:10, 5 May 2005 (UTC)