User:Pacman118/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Bioelectricity

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
I chose this article because I love when biology, physics and chemistry combine in one, and this seemed like an article that brought those three sciences together. The article discusses the definition of bioelectricity, the field of bioelectricity, applications and processes of bioelectricity and what the future might hold for bioelectricity. After having studied neuroscience, chemistry, anatomy and physiology, this seemed like a fascinating topic from the list of articles to study.

Evaluate the article
(Compose a detailed evaluation of the article here, considering each of the key aspects listed above. Consider the guiding questions, and check out the examples of what a useful Wikipedia article evaluation looks like.)

I feel like the lead section on this article was very good. The author(s) gave a brief introduction to the topic and definition of bioelectricity, and they introduced a few of the concepts and ideas that they would be presenting in their article. I didn’t see that they included anything extra that wasn’t included in the article which was good. The only improvement that might be made would be to add citations for their definitions or to include more of what they are going to discuss in the rest of the article. These are small tips based on what I read from the evaluating an article assignment in wikipedia.

I feel like there was a good flow to the article and that it covered many of the most important and far reaching subcategories within the topic of bioelectricity. Of course, I am not a pro, this is just an interested amateur’s opinion. I enjoyed how they presented the information, starting with the history of the field, then introducing some of the experimental/research techniques of measurement before going into some of the human impacts that bioelectricity has throughout the population. As far as I could tell, there were little to no grammatical/spelling errors, but some of the vocabulary may have been more advanced than I actually recognize and know how to use/spell.

The images were interesting and helpful in understanding some of the harder to imagine topics of the article. I think that for the most part, the images also included effective and concise descriptions. The only image that I had a hard time understanding was figure 4, but that was mainly because I had a hard time orienting myself with the image so as to see the voltage difference across the cellular membrane. All of the images came referenced with citations that were traced back to public studies/articles and so yes, I do believe that the images adhered to the copyright policy of wikipedia. All of the images were on the right hand side of the page, it may have been more visually appealing to have their location vary throughout the article.

The talk page gave some great insights to what other people that may be more knowledgeable on the subject had to offer. I especially agree with “proposed MERGE” response about separating and distinguishing between bioelectricity and biomagnetism. I am no expert on either topic, but I agree with what was said about the two fields being distinct. Electricity and magnetism are often confused as being the same or very similar, even though there are large differences between the two fields of study. The article was rated C-class high importance. We haven’t discussed bioelectricity in class, but I am sure that we will get into membrane potentials soon as we study more of the physiology of the membranes like the electron transport chain and the proton motive force. It is fun to see the importance of biological membranes in almost all aspects of life.

I think overall this was a good article. I think it was expansive in it’s content but not so much that it became too long or dry. I enjoyed learning more especially about bioelectricity and cancer but also wound healing and cell guidance. Over the past year, I have been participating in research with a professor on campus. We are looking into the mechanisms by which zebrafish are able to repair their retinas after light damage that causes blindness. I think this information is applicable and important to better understand how animals (including humans) engage in cellular healing processes and cellular communication. I do think that this article would have been much more difficult to read without any prior knowledge on the topic. It was full of field-specific jargon that made some concepts difficult to understand/interpret. Improvements might be made in the use of words and terms that are more universally understood, after all, wikipedia is a public encyclopedia. I think that this article was complete for the most part. How complete can any field of science be after all? I think of completeness as containing all of the pertinent information at the time of publication. Science continually grows and improves as we do more research and understand concepts from different lights. New discoveries are made all the time and that is why it is difficult to judge a scientific articles completeness based on the time from which we are reading. However, from what I read, I believe this article to be complete and very informative.