User:Re332168/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Aqua Regia

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
In a recent chemistry-related Youtube video I watched, Aqua Regia was mentioned. At the time, I had searched it up and referred to the Wikipedia article to learn what it was.

Evaluate the article
The lead section does a good job of providing a quick overview of what aqua regia is. It is very concise, too much in my opinion; the sentences don't flow together well and make the paragrph feel disjointed. The first sentence identifies what aqua regia is in a way much like other Wikipedia and encyclopedia articles I have seen, and the rest of the paragraph covers information that is later elaborated on in the 'Chemistry' and 'History' subsections.

Content-wise, I believe the article is excellent. The subsections include preparation of aqua regia, applications in chemistry, the reaction and process of dissolving gold and platinum (for which aqua regia is known for), and the history of it. These sections are all relevant and the amount of information under each section is balanced. There is no apparent missing content (the history section seems lacking at first, but that little has been written about aqua regia throughout history so there just isn't much information). The article is unbiased, only stating historical facts, methods of modern usage, and demonstrating the relevant chemical equations. It was easy for me to read the article, and I did not notice any grammatical issues.

There are a few images throughout the article, most of which demonstrate the appearance of aqua regia, including at various stages of dissolving gold and platinum. As the article is short and it seems that not much is known or written about the subject, the reference list is short and the 'Talk' page only has a single comment asking if aqua regia can be prepared using different chemicals. The references all work, however many lead to old websites that may have been used in schools, but not research articles. Some of the claims about applications of aqua regia are without sources, as well as all of the chemical equations; as there's no source backing the equations, I can't trust that they are accurate.

Overall, I believe the article is well-written but it is severely lacking good sources. The article is currently listed as C-class on Wikipedia likely due to the lack of information and sources. From a quick Google search, there doesn't seem to be many research articles on the topic, but there are many websites of reliable universities and organizations discussing it that would be more up-to-date sources than the ones currently in the article. Other than updating the reference list and finding sources for the chemistry of aqua regia, I don't think much else can be improved about the article; there doesn't seem to be much information about aqua regia in the first place so the article won't be able to have much more content than what it currently has.