Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Combined gas law


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was redirect to Ideal gas law. Tone 17:00, 30 January 2019 (UTC)

Combined gas law

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A subset/consequence of the ideal gas law (to where I think a redirect is in order) where the constant k is not related to molar values.

We have other gas law articles, e.g. Boyle's law, separate from the IGL, but that is justified by a well-established meaning and significant historical context, described in the article. On the other hand, the "combined gas law" is used by quite a few sources as synonymous for IGL: many GScholar hits use "R" as the constant symbol, for instance, which is a clear giveaway; furthermore, I could find no "historical context" content in online sources. (Among the two article refs, I have no access to the Lionel Raff textbook, and the Java applet calls it "ideal gas law".) Tigraan Click here to contact me 15:58, 23 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Science-related deletion discussions. XOR&#39;easter (talk) 17:07, 23 January 2019 (UTC)


 * remove if no sources found. This article is so old and basic that I did not even hesitate before about its reliability. --MaoGo (talk) 12:43, 24 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Redirect to ideal gas law, and add a sentence there making note of this term. XOR&#39;easter (talk) 16:54, 24 January 2019 (UTC)


 * Redirect to ideal gas law. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 17:07, 24 January 2019 (UTC)


 * Redirect to ideal gas law and mention the use of this term per ; this is a WP:CFORK that can adequately be addressed there. ComplexRational (talk) 20:33, 25 January 2019 (UTC)


 * Keep There are numerous textbooks that describe combined gas law, and it is commonly given as separate from ideal gas law - . Given these sources, the reason given by the nominator sounds close to OR, and a simple redirect is bound to confuse students looking for these terms. At least a partial merge of its content is necessary if this article is to be redirected.  Its relationship to ideal gas law should be explained, and Wikipedia should explain rather than confuse. Hzh (talk) 20:15, 27 January 2019 (UTC)
 * I agree with a partial merge (as I said above), and would suggest a WP:RSECT to avoid a WP:SURPRISE. ComplexRational (talk) 23:58, 27 January 2019 (UTC)
 * I would much prefer a keep because any merge of this sort should be discussed first in the talk page so that those who are knowledgeable with the subject can discuss how to merge the two. Otherwise there is a risk that you might end up with a garbled content and that would do a disservice to students who might consult these articles in their studies.  This is particularly important given that this AfD is based on a faulty premise that somehow combined gas law and ideal gas law are the same.  They are not - while you can derive ideal gas law from combined gas law by introducing a gas constant R and an n, they are given as different in textbooks and therefore should not be confused. It is also possible to expand the article with the sources available. Hzh (talk) 10:45, 29 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Process-wise, it would be totally valid to decide at AfD to merge and then hammer out the exact text later; to my knowledge, whenever an AfD ends up as "merge" that is how it is done, we do not kick it back to WP:RM. As to the rest, I will answer Nick Moyes' comment below. Tigraan Click here to contact me 12:51, 29 January 2019 (UTC)
 * merge, having seen the sources but no historical background yet, I change my vote to merge. --MaoGo (talk) 16:22, 28 January 2019 (UTC)


 * Nom comment In light of the above, I agree about a merge and RSECT. I suggest a new section in Ideal gas law. Here's some text for the AfD closer per Merge what? (clearly this can and should be edited further after the AfD closes):


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

Combined gas law
Combining Charles's law, Boyle's law, and Gay-Lussac's law gives the combined gas law:

$$\frac{PV}{T}=k$$

where:
 * $$P$$ is the pressure of the gas,
 * $$V$$ is the volume of the gas,
 * $$T$$ is the absolute temperature of the gas,
 * $$k$$ is a constant (for a fixed amount of gas).


 * Tigraan Click here to contact me 10:39, 29 January 2019 (UTC)


 * Keep No, I completely disagree with this proposal to merge into Ideal gas law. This page, as it exists, functions well and encyclopaedically to demonstrate how the 'combined gas law' is derived from derived from Boyles, Charles' and Guy-Lussac's laws and how it can be applied. It's fundamental to science. If anything, the Ideal Gas Law page ought to be merged into this one, and the reference cited by  in their merge proposal serves only to demonstrate this. And here's another for chemistry dummies that demonstrates the same. That there is no historical section to show how the combined gas law derived from Boyles, Charles' and Guy-Lussac's laws is totally irrelevant if multiple sources demonstrate (as they do) this is a scientifically recognised term and a notable topic in its own right - which, non-chemist though I am - I firmly believe it is. This page stands alone as a simple-to-understand page on an important law, separate from the more theoretical Avogadro's law-based Ideal gas law, albeit they are closely allied. Either keep these two articles distinct, or merge Ideal gas law into this one, not the other way around! The proposed target page is already complex enough, seems less significant than this page under deletion discussion, and the target  written in a less non-encyclopaedic tone, using the 2nd person voice (you) as if it were a classroom workbook (WP:NOTTEXTBOOK). Nick Moyes (talk) 11:40, 29 January 2019 (UTC)


 * Showing the math of how the CGL is derived from Boyle's etc. is not the purpose of an encyclopedia article. Once you remove the math, there is little left in the article, hence I believe it should be covered in a parent article.
 * My point about the "historical context" stuff is not that such context is needed to have an article (it is not). The point is that when you remove the math, all there is left to a combined gas law article is "The formula is PV/T=cst and you can derive it from Boyle+Charles+Gay-Lussac", which is short enough to be covered by a parent article. Since there is a natural merge target, we should not keep a permastub around. (Whether fixable problems currently ail the target article is not an obstacle to such a merge.)
 * As to the suggestion to merge the other way around, well, I could not disagree more. The ideal gas law as scientific concept has been discussed in science history books (two examples), it was used as measurement target in a pedagogy study. It is standalone-notable from a historical point of view alone (we have an article about phlogiston even if no modern chemistry textbook uses it). If you can find similar sources for the combined gas law, I will gladly change to !vote keep, but all I could find are textbooks (the only non-textbook interesting mention I found from GScholar is but I do not have access to it). Also, to be perfectly clear, if a textbook gave such information it would be an appropriate source, but understandably textbooks usually contain the mathematical derivation and it's all.  Tigraan Click here to contact me 12:51, 29 January 2019 (UTC)


 * I would agree that ideal gas law is the more important topic, since some textbooks mention the ideal gas law but don't mention the combined gas law. I'm assuming that's because you can derive the ideal gas law from the laws of Boyle, Charles and Gay-Lussac, and then add the Avogadro's hypothesis. However, the argument of whether it is in science history books or not is irrelevant, and the notability of the subject can be established by the topic being covered in textbooks. I'm also pretty sure that a topic found in textbooks is something that has already been discussed in other scholarly books and articles, and it is just a matter of whether someone takes the trouble to use them to expand the article. Hzh (talk) 14:24, 29 January 2019 (UTC)
 * I agree textbooks are a sufficient basis for notability, but the question is whether they give anything to write about. What would counceivably the article be expanded about? If your position is "just have a permastub, where's the harm in that", well, I do not think there is a policy against it. However, "there must be lots of other interesting stuff in other sources yet unfound" is unlikely to fly. Tigraan Click here to contact me 08:04, 30 January 2019 (UTC)
 * At the moment, the assertion is that it will be a permastub, and that there can be nothing more added, neither of which you have shown to be true. It is not a stub at the moment, the mathematical part is necessary to show how this law is derived, and although the derivation part can be trimmed a bit, it still won't be a stub even after trimming. Hzh (talk) 11:25, 30 January 2019 (UTC)


 * The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.