User talk:Olin/Archive 1

A welcome from Sango123
Hello,, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions; I hope you like the place and decide to stay. We're glad to have you in our community! Here are a few good links for newcomers:


 * If you haven't already, drop by the New user log and tell others a bit about yourself.
 * Always sign your posts on talk pages! That way, others will know who left which comments.
 * The Five Pillars of Wikipedia
 * Simplified Ruleset
 * How to edit a page
 * Editing, policy, conduct, and structure tutorial
 * Picture tutorial
 * How to write a great article
 * Naming conventions
 * Manual of Style
 * Wikipedia Glossary

I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Though we all make goofy mistakes, here is what Wikipedia is not. If you have any questions or concerns, don't hesitate to see the help pages or add a question to the village pump. The Community Portal can also be very useful.

Happy editing!

-- Sango  123   (talk)  19:15, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

P.S. Feel free to leave a message on my talk page if you need help with anything or simply wish to say hello. :)

Talk:Lanthanide
See also related talk at User talk:Feline1. Femto 13:35, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

Buffer solution
I see you've been doing some work on buffer solution. I think the second paragraph needs a bit more, as it is a bit confusing to me. In particular, the sentence "Buffer solutions usually consist of either a weak acid and its conjugate base." seems to be missing something. It's been too long since I did any chemistry for me to make much of a stab at it. If you can come up with something better, that would be great. Gwimpey 23:23, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

a question about Uuo

 * Is it really true that element 118 would form an oxide in nature? The reason I ask is that the xenon oxides have positive heats of formation for their oxides, and are not necessarily stable. Thanks. Olin 22:46, 22 February 2006 (UTC)
 * In each next period in the periodic table, the noble gases get less noble as their outermost electrons get further from the center of things. Helium and neon are not interested in bonding at all. Argon is on the margin: see http://pubs.acs.org/cen/80th/noblegases.html (in its paragraph starting "Many recent findings"). KrF2 can be made. Xenon is far from noble if Miss Fluorine is free for the taking. And Uuo is two more periods on from xenon. Anthony Appleyard 07:00, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

Request for edit summary
Hi. I am writing with a small request. I would like to ask you to use edit summaries explaining your changes a bit more often when you contribute. To be honest, when I saw this change, I thought it was trolling, and I almost reverted it. Some things which are obvious to you are not obvious to others, and a brief description of your change in the edit summary box can prevent confusion. :)

You can reply here if you have comments. Thanks. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 02:36, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

UO3 thanks!
Thanks for changing the article in a way it looks good. My english and my writing abilities are poor compared with my chemistry. This was always a problem. The changes you made look very good. The article gets some shape. Vor something so useless like Uranium trioxide this article is realy on the right way. Maybe it will be on this way to get a A-class article in the chemicals project somday! --Stone 10:32, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

Its not important! The important ones are U3O8 the natural source for uranium and UO2 the nuclear fuel. And this is why this is the battle ground not the uranium article which has a broader interest but also more people watching.But thanks for your work !--Stone 14:24, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

As I start a new Job soon the work on wikipedia will decreas a little in the next weeks, so have a look on uranium trioxide. I like your changes, to be very involved personally is sometimes a obstacle to make a good article.--Stone 08:05, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

Suffix
You shouldn't do a cut-and-paste move of the old "Suffix" information to Suffix (disambiguation), because doing so destroys the edit history. The correct way to do this would be to MOVE the page from "Suffix" to "Suffix (disambiguation)" (which now will require an administrator to do, because the edit histories are in the way), and then create a NEW "Suffix" page as a redirect to Suffix (linguistics). --Russ Blau (talk) 22:26, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

UO3(g) thermodynamics of formation
Three or four months ago you offered to help with the enthalpies of production for UO3(g) -- would you please have a look at Talk:Uranium trioxide and see what you can make of that table from Wanner, et al.? Tri3 23:53, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

THANKS!
Can't tell you adequately how much I appreciate what you've written to the Talk:Entropy page. I was very discouraged -- at least 80, maybe 100 or more hours of work, patiently (usually!) trying to urge just two information theory (and good thermo) guys plus a physics grad student and a science history guy to open their minds to the possibility that 'disorder' has been a crock for a century! I begged them to ask chemists of their acquaintance, old schoolmates, etc., etc. about how confused the ordinary stiff was in starting entropy with "entropy is disorder", not just the bright ones that they probably were. They didn't do or consider that at all. They focused only on themselves,...until you brought a strong statement to the table....and they listened. Or at least nonsuch did. (He has been extremely intransigent about the utility of 'disorder' in information 'entropy' and its equivalence with thermodynamic entropy. But he is relatively open and moderate in responding to you.) Looks like a chemist might have a line or two in WP to help the poor kids around the world suffering under profs who really aren't too concerned about them.... FrankLambert 19:11, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

Follow up
Just spent an hour writing you -- and the Wik server crashed! Items: congratulating you on your courage to delete 'disorder', despite objections of old guys. What text did you use? I was unduly lucky to feel increasingly uncomfortable with 'disorder' AND then have weeks and months to chew on it like a dog on a leather bone :-) (Any one as sharp as those in info 'entropy' in Wiki could have come up with the answer of energy dispersal if they'd thought about it for 15 minutes. But, evidently, bright people can have as closed minds as those who are ignorant!

A simple paper, but one that has a fast entree to mixing and to the REASON for all colligative effects is at http://www.entropysite.com/Entropia.pdf. Best to you in your career! Nothing is more rewarding than having a student tell you (at the time or years afterward) "I never could have understood that stuff if you hadn't taken the time to help me." ! FrankLambert 23:28, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

Pressure diagram
Sure; please do. jsalsman at gmail dot com. I spoke with a reference librarian who could see it at UCSC, and she said it only went up to UO2.6/U3O8 but did include temperatures up to 3000 °C. It's not UO3 but that will sure be helpful. LossIsNotMore 23:28, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Thanks!!!
I will try to find the Inhaled Part. article today if Stanford has it, or the weekend if UC has it. LossIsNotMore 21:42, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

Thanks
Hi, your discussion posting to my page is appreciated. I interpreted your earlier comment as other earlier editors who think they know all the answers (according to books they have that address only experiments done in a laboratory, which do not approximate battlefield conditions), and shutting off discussion due basically to lack of interest, especially as regards exposing possible negative aspects of depleted uranium. In any case, your comment that "suspended liquid/solids in air is what's being breathed in" is significant, and I don't recall this point being made so succinctly. Has this possibility been addressed on the UO3 discussion page? Is it possible that this is part of the answer, and that the oxides (as the Army publication clearly states) are also produced during battlefield combustion of DU ammunition? Badagnani 01:39, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

You owe tree + H
There is only one way to stay sane with it! Have fun and only look onto the talk page of it, if you had done something sucsesfully! I hope we can get it to a point in time when he and is petition fanished into oblivion.--Stone 15:54, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Rebellion
Thanks for joining! As you can see, I have stopped any kind of editing, but I am hanging around to help on the "rebellion".

I liked what you say on your user page. However, it is a little hard to read for anyone who (a) like me knows no chemistry and (b) has no background in the dispute. Given this is a forum of (hopefully) subject-matter experts, few of whom will have a deep knowledge of each other's area, it's important, in the case of cranks, to give a user-friendly description of what the issue was about, and why it was cranky. If you read through the talk pages of these things, as I do, it is often quite hard to tell one side from the other, as the discussion focuses on the minutiae of who insulted who, who is POV or not, and so on. And often the crackpots do maintain a veneer of politeness throughout.

Another problem, on the Uranium trioxide issue, is that the offending person seems to have more than one user ID (or was there more than one person?). Dbuckner 13:29, 8 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Thanks - very good. Dbuckner 08:00, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

Re: So I'll ask...

 * Why does it have to be gaseous uranium trioxide? Why can't people inhale some uranium oxide (whatever the substance) particles and that be harmful? The radiation doesn't care whether it's solid or liquid or gas or UO3 or U3O8 or UO2 or whatever.

UO3(g) can explain why people who have no trace of DU in their urine have the symproms of uranyl poisoning. This is outlined in detail in my first email to Dr. Alexander at Talk:Uranium trioxide. It is well established, and not controversial that the chemical toxicity is far more hazardous than the radioactivity from any form of depleted or natural uranium (for example the catalytic generation of hydroxyl radicals by uranium in vitro is 1,000,000 times greater than its radiolytic generation.)

On your user page you have written:


 * It makes no sense that uranium trioxide would be a gas when burning. Thousands of general chemistry students have used the burning of magnesium to determine the empirical formula of magnesium oxide. Very little magnesium content is lost in the process. Why would uranium metal be any different?

That is an excellent question. I wish I knew the answer.


 * I am not expert on uranium, uranium oxides, or even inorganic chemistry. I do have an advanced degree in chemistry. I stumbled upon the war in the chemistry wikipedia pages, and decided I would test the waters in terms of the factuality of what was presented. The truth is, certain basic principles in chemistry just don't add up to give a clear and convincing case for a uranium trioxide gas.

Doesn't that make you the ideal person to ask Dr. Alexander, with his 45 years experience with the gas, why he thinks it is a "quite stable" combustion product?

I'm not politically motivated, or if I am, it's far below my conscious motivation. Ever since I started seeing this uranyl gas aspect, I've been motivated with a desire to protect people's health and make sure that the people who are arguing, from political or other motivations on any side of the issue, are talking truth instead of wrong assumptions. LossIsNotMore 23:23, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

darwikinism
excuse me for bringing this up, but as the original author of darwikinism, i would like to point out that in no way did i intend to force people into believing in a necessarily steady increase in quality. this - of course - would only be the case if selection really disfavored weak authors/articles in terms of the quality of the substance - which is often just not the case. instead, we often witness survival of the contributions (both insertions and deletions) that come from socially strongly interlinked authors. plus, there is a considerable random drift introduced by randomly intervening trolls, numbskulls and downright twits who can only be turned "off" discretely and for a limited time. if you care to take the proliferation of fan-articles from obscure subcultures as an indication of general degradation in quality (which i sometimes do), then again you might not have hit the point, because in terms of the article author's criteria, those articles often reach an astounding level of detail and quality. best regards. -- Kku 09:03, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

Re: Your educated people rant
Would you please speak with Dr. Alexander on the subject? Again I assure you that he has told me he will take phone calls or emails from anyone on the subject. I am only trying to ask: after devoting so much time to this question, what reasons, other than those I have suggested, could you possibly have for not wanting to talk to him?

The only reason you have ever given me for saying that you doubt UO3(g) is a uranium combustion product is that magnesium combustion results in an entirely solid oxide product. Dr. Alexander, on the other hand, has been working with UO3(g) formed from uranium oxidation for 45 years. I am no "expert" in chemistry, but I know enough about it to know for a fact that rough analogies from one compound to another, based, e.g., only on the fact that they both involve the oxidation of a metal, are not strong enough to draw inferences upon. LossIsNotMore 01:24, 10 November 2006 (UTC)


 * How do you get from stating that my so-called rant "is not directed at anyone in particular" to "You insult me"? I asked a series of questions. If you feel insulted because you aren't able to answer them satisfactorily, then you need to contemplate how I managed to touch such a nerve.
 * Dr. Alexander is not "my" expert, he is the expert. He was originally brought to my attention when Stone cited his paper in an attempt to show that the vapor pressure was low (when in fact it tightly fits a smooth exponential curve even after being combined with data points from another much earlier paper by different authors; a curve that extrapolates into plenty of vapor pressure at the burning temperatures.) No living person, as far as I can tell, has any more experience than Dr. Alexander has with the behavior of uranium trioxide gas, and he agrees. His opinions are based on his own empirical research, as well as the research of his colleagues in the area.  He would be more than happy to explain that research to you.  Why don't you want to hear it?
 * it is an extraordinary claim, requiring a good peer reviewed source
 * What claim is extraordinary? You admit UO3(g) exists, so it can't be that.  That UO3 it is a combustion product is stated directly by Rostker (2000).  That "about half" of uranium burning in air is "emitted violently as a vapor" is confirmed by Carter and Stewart.  The fact that some of it is going to escape in gas form before it can condense and decompose with other individual UO3 molecules is clear from first principles -- there is a substantial number of those gas molecules which will never come in to contact with any of the others as they diffuse through the air, so they will never be able to decompose.  And in fact Salbu et al. (2004) found it in their swabs of combustion products and condensation after a bid uranium fire.  That is a huge amount of evidence.  And what evidence do you have to the contrary?  Nothing more than an analogy from the fact that magnesium oxide is an entirely solid combustion product. Nothing more!
 * Exactly which claim are you calling extraordinary? LossIsNotMore 00:31, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

Re: Taschner
I acknowledge your note to my user-talk page. As (I hope) I made clear, I hauled the data out of cyber-death simply because this portion appeared both notable and permissible. If you are satisfied that it is a copyvio, or in any other way contravenes the Wiki~law, please process it for deletion. I apologise for the delay in replying -- i visit Wiki occasionally and intensively and then perforce must be "away" for periods. SockpuppetSamuelson

Birch reduction
Hi there.

I chose your name (and four others) from WikiProject Chemistry, specifically for organic, as an active Wikipedian in the field, who might be able to help.

I have been working to help Howard Zimmerman with the article about Birch reduction. Prof. Zimmerman wrote a new, much more detailed article - I helped them format it, and tried to help with avoiding WP:OR and suchlike. It has now been merged into the original article, but I am most concerned about these types of remarks he made;


 * while Wikipedia is great for non-scientific stuff, for scientific stuff the editors and administrators seem to want textbook material and not the original refereed literature. Thus V8rik thought that Jerry March's book (great for superficial coverage) on two pages has only the basics of the Birch Reduction and nothing really on its mechanism. The texts don't touch the matter with rare exceptions. So to rely on texts and to treat refereed literature by experts in the field as either irrelevant or wrong - seems crazy to people who work directly with the subject. The texts often are laden with errors and don't keep up with advances.

I wonder if you could contact. I am sure they have a lot to offer Wikipedia, if only they are guided in the way we work together.

Many thanks,  Chzz  ►  01:22, 20 April 2010 (UTC)