Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Elements/Archive 9

article importance and hits
I went through pretty much all the articles labeled with the chem el template and:
 * I noticed that all elements except unnamed ones have 3k hits.
 * I've labeled importance of the element articles according to: Mid for under ~10k hits; High for up to ~25k; and Top over that.
 * I've tried to label the rest of the articles similarly, but dropping them 1 class (so Low for first category, mid next and high); only top ones are chemical elem and periodic table.
 * some articles such as neodymium are accessed weirdly often. ??? Nergaal (talk) 21:39, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

colorless gases images
I have been approached by a contributor that left me this message:
 * "Hello, I see you have reverted my removal of the picture in Template:Infobox krypton. I have serious doubts if this picture carries any useful information to the reader. IMHO from this one can imagine krypton in vials forms a bubble that casts a brownish shadow or it is itself an unclear brownish substance or it is a brownish stain on a fabric. There is no way to photograph a colorless gas and any trial is doomed to defeat: instead of being helpful, may only misguide somebody. I know, pictures are nice and make the article good looking but Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia, not a tabloid. :-) The same holds for Template:Infobox hydrogen, of course. Regards, Michał Sobkowski (talk) 16:21, 1 September 2008 (UTC)"

I wanted to know what do you guys thing about the images (although this might have been discussed in the past). Nergaal (talk) 17:15, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

Niobium
Is Niobium still a Start or is it already C- or even B-Class?--Stone (talk) 05:13, 2 September 2008 (UTC)
 * It is definitely not a B, since it completely lacks a chemistry section. It has refs, but it is a bit short... still, probably better than the other starts we have. Nergaal (talk) 05:32, 2 September 2008 (UTC)
 * By now we have a short chemistry section! --Stone (talk) 10:01, 2 September 2008 (UTC)
 * But know its at last a C? With Occurence, Production and Chemistry! Look at the difference [ http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Niobium&diff=235896426&oldid=231538240]. --Stone (talk) 21:30, 2 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I love this wikiproject! :) Nergaal (talk) 22:30, 2 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Now that is B I want to get it to A! As there is no formal A-Class article candidates‎, I will aske here for a few hints what should be improfed in the article to get it A-Class.--Stone (talk) 08:17, 4 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Expand the lead to two paragraphs, expand Precautions with the help of a good source (OSHA or an MSDS, I can help with that), verify Isotopes section (NUBASE?), merge Numismatics into Applications, scan the references for typos and consistent formatting , deal with the  tags (I've left comments next to each tag within the article itself), and a good thorough copyedit. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 16:56, 4 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Will try to deal with the things! Thanks.--Stone (talk) 20:01, 4 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Precautions section has now some hidden refs (have to read them), MSDS and OSHA say nothing harmful. The Isotopes I have to get the one and only ref possible. Numismatics merged into Applications, and found refs for the jewlery and the anodizing colours.  The ton is and will always be metric if I write it! (37/128 inches as diameter of something...., why would sombody invent this). The niobium steel was interesting vor pipelines.--Stone (talk) 22:16, 4 September 2008 (UTC)
 * If by "the one and only ref possible" you mean Nubase, I'll do that if you'd like. I've rewritten several isotopes sections using Nubase, and I think I've gotten it down to an exact science at this point. :) --Cryptic C62 · Talk 03:15, 5 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Would be great if you could help wth the isotopes! I am a chemist and no very familar with isotops.--Stone (talk) 12:42, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I've already gotten started, and I should be done compiling all of the info in the next couple of days. I always check Nubase itself rather than Isotopes of niobium for extra accuracy! --Cryptic C62 · Talk 19:07, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I've added a few ref tags myself, and expanded the history section. Nergaal (talk) 04:28, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Any other suggestions? --Stone (talk) 12:36, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

The Periodic Table of Videos
I would like to propose the addition of the Periodic Table of Videos to each element on wikipedia as an external link. The following descrition of the videos is provided on their homepage:

"Tables charting the chemical elements have been around since the 19th century - but this modern version has a short video about each one. Since launching this site, our videos have been watched more than 1.9 million times. But we're not finished yet. We've started updating all the videos with new stories, better samples and bigger experiments. So once you've watched all 118 videos, make sure you come back and check on our progress." http://www.periodicvideos.com

The videos are all also on youtube which I believe would be the best site to link and the creator gives permission and would prefer links to the youtube videos.

Please see as an example: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=YvSkXd_VVYk

Many thanks for your consideration.

Richnotts (talk) 07:48, 4 September 2008 (UTC)


 * I have watched about twenty of these videos this evening: almost every one of them had some sort of scientific error in it. I don't think there is any harm in having them as external links if the editors on any particular article find them useful but, in their current state, I would hesitate to give them tacit approval by linking them on a systematic basis. Physchim62 (talk) 22:57, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Template:Cite doi
I stumped onto this template, which I think could be extremely neat for reffing journals in the future without bothering about formatting. Nergaal (talk) 19:03, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Metalloids
I made some arrangements there, but since I´m not much sure on these topics would be good that somebody checks. I removed Astatine and included Polonium. --Feministo (talk) 10:56, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

Ilmenium Pelopium Celtium....
I wanted to know how to make a good page with alle the discovered elements which have a place in chemical peer reviewed articles but later where not confirmed. Should we make:
 * one big article with all of them named false claims of elemet discovery or rejected elements discoveries
 * an idividual article for every name.
 * include the names into the element pages (which is problematic for some of the elements which where mixtures or with celtium were the chemistry of REE was found for the element 72, but later was shown that the element is not REE and had nothing todo with 72 now hafnium).--Stone (talk) 09:09, 11 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Hrm. When I was working on francium, there were several false/erroneous claims to its discovery, such as moldavium and alcalinium. I just made each proposed name a redirect to francium and wrote a section dedicated to the false discoveries. I don't know if this model would work for every situation, but it seems to be suitable for francium. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 19:10, 11 September 2008 (UTC)


 * I suggest a summary/list article on all the "false elements", with possibly articles on individual notable cases, and of course mention them in the history sections of real elements where relevant. We have an article on coronium already, and maybe the list of discredited substances can be useful too. --Itub (talk) 21:01, 11 September 2008 (UTC)


 * I believe the non-confirmed elements should/could go into the List of chemical elements naming controversies article. Nergaal (talk) 00:26, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

I don't think a naming controversy is the same as a discredited discovery or a non-existent element. But anyway, I found two more articles on such elements: ausonium and hesperium. The List of elements by symbol also has a section of "symbols not currently used" that includes discredited discoveries. --Itub (talk) 07:56, 18 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Feel free to rename the page. I just thought that they are related. Nergaal (talk) 00:31, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia 0.7 articles have been selected for Chemical elements
Wikipedia 0.7 is a collection of English Wikipedia articles due to be released on DVD, and available for free download, later this year. The Version 1.0 Editorial Team has made an automated selection of articles for Version 0.7.

We would like to ask you to review the articles selected from this project. These were chosen from the articles with this project's talk page tag, based on the rated importance and quality. If there are any specific articles that should be removed, please let us know at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.7. You can also nominate additional articles for release, following the procedure at Release Version Nominations.

A list of selected articles with cleanup tags, sorted by project, is available. The list is automatically updated each hour when it is loaded. Please try to fix any urgent problems in the selected articles. A team of copyeditors has agreed to help with copyediting requests, although you should try to fix simple issues on your own if possible.

We would also appreciate your help in identifying the version of each article that you think we should use, to help avoid vandalism or POV issues. These versions can be recorded at this project's subpage of User:SelectionBot/0.7. We are planning to release the selection for the holiday season, so we ask you to select the revisions before October 20. At that time, we will use an automatic process to identify which version of each article to release, if no version has been manually selected. Thanks! For the Wikipedia 1.0 Editorial team, SelectionBot 22:26, 15 September 2008 (UTC)


 * FYI: All the known elements will in fact be included, because they will be grandfathered in from Version 0.5. Walkerma (talk) 04:34, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

hafnium rating
Hi hafnium needs a look for typos and a rerating! It changed a little from yesterday. I do not want to do rate it, but would like to have it at least C-Class.--Stone (talk) 20:30, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
 * thanks for spotting that :D. Nergaal (talk) 00:30, 11 September 2008 (UTC)
 * But now it should go for a B-Class!!-Stone (talk) 21:06, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Boron isotope ratio
I wanted to ask, where I can get the isotope ratio for boron, the article does not give a source. In the text several percentages are given. I found several papers and added them as hidden coment to the isotope section. What I found out is that the isotop ratio varies by 900/00 for me this means 9% which makes everything from 78-87 is OK (81% (+3 to -6)% (from lit)). Should we quote the NIST NBS SRN 951 standard? They give in their analysis  B-10/B11 0.2473 ± 0.0002 (Boron-10, atom percent (19.827 ± 0.013) and Boron-11, atom percent 80.173 ± 0.013). They also published a long paper on the composition. Some people already complained about the not very clear statments in the article. I would go for the NIST standart and clearly state where it came from!--Stone (talk) 16:14, 20 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I believe the IUPAC publisher a list of atomic weights every several years. You could probably use that to calculate what ratio are they using (since there are only 2 isotopes). Nergaal (talk) 21:47, 20 September 2008 (UTC)
 * The best reference is probably the NIST Isotopic Composition page, which give 19.9(7)% and 80.1(7)%. The isotopic composition is complicated by the geological variations which occur (boron from Turkey is richer in $10$B than boron from the U.S.) and by the fact that commercial supplies are often depleted in $10$B by the nuclear industry. Physchim62 (talk) 22:01, 20 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I changed the info box by adding the reference and a fact tag to the variation, because this needs a citation. Second thing is the sentence:δ11Boron values in natural waters, ranging from -16 to +59. What unit? %, 0/00, ppm or ppb? Without unit it does not make sense.--Stone (talk) 06:22, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

Trusted sources
From the FAC on Yttrium, this should be a temporary place to build some database of trusted and untrusted sources. Nergaal (talk) 19:31, 13 September 2008 (UTC)\


 * Trusted sources
 * This should also read as suggested sources for the editors to look at in case they are looking for information. Think of this section as "suggested database".


 * 1) acs juournals (acs.com)
 * 2) other journals of international relevance (usually in English)
 * 3) nubase????
 * 4) usgs.gov
 * 5) other .gov ???


 * Unreliable sources
 * Mostly for websites that have been shown/agreed upon that do not represent reliability. These are to be used ONLY in articles that are not GA/GAN, or FA/FAC. Link to relevant discussion where the reliability was "disproven" is preferred for future reference


 * 1) lenntech.com PR:ununoctium
 * 2) webelements.com PR:ununoctium
 * 3) apsidium.com PR:ununoctium


 * Dubious sources
 * Sources that have not been clearly shown to be unreliable but they might be suspicious. They ought to be used only for less essential and less controversial parts of the article.


 * 1) patents
 * 2) vankrogt.com


 * Whys hould the journals usually be English? For most of the elements the discovery is in the time when the dominating publishing language was German. The French and Swedish journals are by far better for the history section than the English ones.--Stone (talk) 22:20, 30 September 2008 (UTC)


 * I'd say that when you are citing the paper that reported the original discovery, you can't choose the language! (Unless someone published a translation.) But if you are looking at recent papers about the history of the element, and you had the opportunity to choose between two similar sources but only one is in English, it is preferable to cite the one in English if possible. I don't expect this situation to come up often, tough. --Itub (talk) 06:08, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

I think webelements should be considered a "reliable source". --Rifleman 82 (talk) 08:45, 1 October 2008 (UTC)


 * Although webelements is a very good website and the information there is generally reliable in the normal sense of the word, I don't think we should treat it as a "reliable source" for featured articles because it generally doesn't cite its sources. My definition of an ideal reliable source is one that allows you to trace the data or claim back to the primary source, or is authoritative, or both. I would feel more comfortable treating vankrogt.com as a reliable source because, although it is a self-published website (something that many people in WP seem to dislike), it cites its sources in detail and seems reasonably "scholarly". Also, vankrogt tends to provide details about the history of the elements that are hard to find elsewhere (because they are directly based on very old primary sources), whereas webelements generally provides information that you could cite from many other places. --Itub (talk) 09:05, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Importance rating of elements
;Importance rating
 * this discussion was started on the hafnium page
 * I'm not sure why this is high-importance. There certainly isn't much to say about this element and there aren't many uses for it.

--mav (talk) 17:40, 21 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Importance: I thought that all the main-group elements are high-imp (a few of them are top though), while the lanthanoids and most of period 7 are mid. Nergaal (talk) 21:59, 21 September 2008 (UTC)
 * The only transition elements that are main group elements are the in group 12. But even if hafnium were in the main group, I wouldn't consider it high importance b/c: It does not head its group/period, is not biologically important, not widely-used b/c of how hard it is to extract, not common on earth or the universe, does not have many outstanding properties (except for neutron absorption of one of its isotopes), not historically very important (missed that boat by being the second to last stable element found, and not the last), in the second to last popularity category we have, and a few other things (not to mention, that there isn't much to say about the element). B/c of all that, I'd rate it as mid-importance (if it were not for the neutron absorbence and the fact that it was predicted by Bohr's model, I'd rate it as low). The more I think of it, the more I think we need a point system for importance that would assign points across a broad range of areas. I'd just like us to have a more systemic grading system for importance. --mav (talk) 23:05, 21 September 2008 (UTC)


 * my thought was to have all the group elements (1 through 18) until actinium (except for the lanthanoids) as rated as high-importance; of these, a few select ones would be top, while all the other confirmed elements would be mid. the Uux elements would then be low (except for 118). All the other supporting pages (groups, periods, lists, etc.) would be rated as a low or mid importance (except a few that are high)—in other words similar reasoning, but one class lower. Please suggest comments/improvements/changes on this scale. 00:18, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

opinions and proposals
Points  When element...
 * I think that a finer-grained approach is needed. A point-based approach may look like this (this is just an example):
 * +2     is in the main group
 * +2     tops its group
 * +1     has stable isotopes
 * +1     is naturally-occurring
 * +1     is relatively abundant
 * +1     is biologically important (+2 if vital to life)
 * +1     is economically important (+2 if vital)
 * +1     is historically important to the development of chemistry (+2 if particularly so)
 * +1     is otherwise historically important (+2 if particularly so)
 * +1     has a particularly unusual property (such as, not following a period/group/orbital/phase trend)
 * +2     has a property that is the "most" or "least" of any other element (exm: most dense, least electronegative, etc)
 * +2     is in most popular category per User:Cryptic C62/Elements
 * +1.5   is in second most popular per above
 * +1     is in third most popular per above
 * 0.5    is in fourth most popular per above

But things like the above (remember, this is just an example) would only be used when it is not obvious what the importance rating of an element should be. Some obvious things, IMO: Any element that tops its group is at least high importance and anything vital to life or industry is also at least that important as well. I would go further and say that any element that both tops its group and is in the main group is top importance and any article that both tops its group and is vital to life or industry is also top importance. Further, any element known since before recorded history should be top importance. Other tops and highs exist, but I think some type of test (like the above example point list) should be used to find those. The main point that I want to get across is that we should have some documented rationale for the ratings. A periodic table by importance would help us find our way on this issue. --mav (talk) 03:01, 23 September 2008 (UTC)


 * I heard 'periodic table by xxx' and my ears perked up. This sounds like a job for me, and one which I would do happily. The points system you've outlined seems fine to me, though I'd like to refrain from participating in the discussion thereof, much as I refrain from evaluating articles by quality, due to the inherent conflict of interest I have as the statistics tracker. As such, whatever system you guys come up with, I will eagerly implement it. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 03:48, 23 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Sounds fine by me. I wanted to have something simple. It might be a bunch of work, but if someone is willing to do it the ok. Cryptic, I guess you could make up some list based on this values and see what we get (keeping some sort of variables though for ease of future refinements). Nergaal (talk) 05:49, 23 September 2008 (UTC)


 * I could easily just publish a table with columns like Popularity and Stable, then just total it all up. That would make it easy to adjust and correct. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 22:18, 23 September 2008 (UTC)


 * I won't object to any of the proposals, but I feel I have to give my opinion that worrying about the importance rankings of the elements is a waste of time. I think the importance ranking scheme is useful for wikiprojects that have thousands of articles and need to produce manageable lists of articles to focus their attention. In contrast, we only have a little over a hundred elements that we all know by name and can keep track of (plus some subsidiary lists and articles about groups and periods). Perhaps the top-importance category could be useful for finding which ones need to be featured, although many of us, and certainly I, have a tendency for featuring articles because they are easy or interesting, not because they are important. But does worrying about the distinction between high- and mid-importance really help in any way? On the other hand, I do feel that the list of popularity assembled by Cryptic C62 is really useful because it gives us some indication of what the readers are actually looking for. --Itub (talk) 06:29, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

"Precautions"
During Yttrium's GAN, User:jimfbleak commented that Precautions should be changed to Hazards. I responded that the former is a widely-accepted heading, and just to be sure, I quickly did a tally of all the element articles:

There are a few oddballs, such as iodine which has both Toxicity and Precautions, and plutonium which has Toxicity as a subheading to Precautions. Of the variants I've seen, Precautions and Safety seem to make the most sense as they are both all-encompassing, whereas Toxicity and Health effects seem too specific. However, specific precautions such as thosem may be useful for subheadings as in the the plutonium example.

While Precautions currently reigns supreme in terms of numbers, we should establish some consensus as to what the most correct heading is. Once that happens, perhaps someone familiar with AWB can quickly change all of the headings to the one we agree upon. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 00:21, 21 August 2008 (UTC)


 * I prefer 'Precautions' b/c it is non-alarmist and general but still descriptive. Things like 'Toxicity', 'Health effects' and 'Safety' are valid subsections under 'Precautions' but I don't think that the alarmist-sounding 'Hazards' should ever be used. My 2 cents. --mav (talk) 03:47, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

Collaboration of the month for October
Per above, the 0.7 version of Wikipedia is being finalized and the deadline for WikiProjects to select particular versions of articles is 20 October. I'd like us to help by concentrating our efforts on article clean-up (8 items) and by selecting good versions of at least the all the top and high importance articles. This would be our COTM from now until 20 October. This will be a great opportunity for us to clean-house, since we have company coming over. What do you think? --mav (talk) 02:15, 23 September 2008 (UTC)


 * I was just about to start working on platinum, and I already did a bunch of research. As much as I'd all love to see us all concentrate on one article and whip it into shape overnight, this is definitely a smart idea for CotM. I suppose I'll just quickly plop all of my facts for platinum and start tinkering around with the 8 cleanup articles. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 04:01, 23 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Fine by me. From what I remember, at least half of those articles have small tags that should take at most 30mins to solve. There might be a couple though that might take a bit more. But talking of COTM, I remembered a statistics I did a while ago on potential topics, and posted at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Elements/Articles. Perhaps in the future some of the COTMs could be chosen from one of the articles there. Nergaal (talk) 04:33, 23 September 2008 (UTC)


 * I looked at several articles the last few weeks and the 8 articles are not the only one with problems. I think before we are ready for 0.7 version of Wikipedia most of the articles need alook. (for example: Osmium stated that Turkey has 10x the world reserves of the metal; Boron has problems with the abundace of isotops and has no chemistry nor a real compounds section, making it more C-Class than b). My COTM would be a reassesment of ALL articles by quality and add some fact tags and look for the obvious problems. There are 118 minus the 5 or 10 last promoted.--Stone (talk) 05:01, 23 September 2008 (UTC)
 * actually 117 minus ~19. anyways, I believe that jsut going on a rampage right now is not really necessary. Focusing out work on a few articles at a time seemed to work fine, and I am not sure it would help to change that now. Also, this is not the 1.0 release, so nobody should expect the articles to be perfect. my 2 cents. Nergaal (talk) 05:41, 23 September 2008 (UTC)


 * For me it would be good if we can read every article once and say yes or no, no extensive editing, but to tag it with clerify and fact tags, that the 0.7 reader knows where we are not sure. I know that this work is not very nice and having a Good or even featured article feels better, but for the whole project it would help. We are half a dozend people and if everyboday reads a article a day we will have plenty of time to do something else.--Stone (talk) 09:12, 23 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Element Quality Check--Stone (talk) 10:12, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Where I live, it is now first of October. What is the Collaboration of the month for October? --Stone (talk) 22:16, 30 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Done. --mav (talk) 00:11, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

Misleading neutron numbers
This topic has come up before, but nothing was decided. The figures that we have on each element infobox have a proton and neutron count. For example, see the figure for iridium on the right. This one says that iridium has 115 neutrons, which is misleading. That number actually corresponds to an artificial radioisotope, whereas the natural isotopes have 114 and 116 neutrons (resulting in an "average" of 115). I was thinking of simply removing the neutron count from the figure, but what do you think? Another option is to give a range, but that might take too much space, and would be arbitrary to some extent. But if we remove the neutron count, what do we do with the proton count? Yet another option would be to give the atomic weight instead of the neutron count (rounded to no more than four significant figures to make it fit). --Itub (talk) 09:40, 3 October 2008 (UTC)
 * I would go for showing atomic number and atomic weight. There is a table of four-figure atomic weights in the latter article. Physchim62 (talk) 10:22, 3 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Just give the neutron count of the most abundant isotope. Nergaal (talk) 19:34, 3 October 2008 (UTC)
 * That is exactly the intent of the numbers. Trouble is, that bad sources were used and some people did not understand what the intent was (thus they averaged things). --mav (talk) 03:47, 4 October 2008 (UTC)


 * I'm in the process of fixing these. It will take some time. --mav (talk) 05:02, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

I've been able to fix all the nav images in periods 1 - 5 that have full-sized PNGs. Unfortunately, the following nav images are lower resolution versions and thus much harder to edit and useless for the ImageMap (thus, not worth editing, IMO). These will need to be recreated at the 800 x 270 pixel size:
 * Ar, Pd, Id, Y, Sc, Ti, V, Cr, Mn, Fe, Co, Ni, Cu, Zn, Ga, Ge, As, Se, Br, Kr, Ar, Cl, S, P, Si, Al

-- mav (talk) 19:10, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

Image Map for nav images
I created an ImageMap for the TableImage images. The code for that is at User:Mav/Sandbox. Before I update Template:Elementbox to implement this, I'd like to know if anybody has suggestions for improvement. Note: This will require abandoning svg images for infoboxes b/c they don't work with image maps and some elements will need full-sized PNG files created. The image map is alone below. A full scale example is at User:Mav/Sandbox/Temp. -- mav (talk) 21:15, 4 October 2008 (UTC)


 * Niiiice! I did not find any bugs yet, but I have a question: what is the line on the bottom of the p-block? Nice idea with the crystal and electron structure too! One more thing you could do is to link the number of protons to atomic number and the number of neutrons to the isotopes of that element. Nergaal (talk) 00:59, 5 October 2008 (UTC)


 * Thanks :) The line represents what block an element is in. Good idea on the link changes - done. --mav (talk) 01:40, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

Isomer discrepancy
I've also relied on Nubase2003 for info on isotopes and isomers, as the data I collect have, up until this point, agreed with an articles corresponding isotopes of xxx page. However, there is a vast inconsistency with the isotopes of platinum. Nubase2003 did not list all of the excitation states that are listed there. I checked Nudat 2, but that didn't have all of the same isomers either. The discussion page revealed that some of the isomers came from Nudat 2's gamma radiation subpages. How can I make any kind of reasonable statements about platinum's isotopes when its corresponding isotope page is so hodgepodge? The half-lives are from one page, and the isomers are from another. Also, why has this never come up before? I was tempted to just use the data from Nubase 2003 and simply ignore the table. On the other hand, I want to go through each isotopes of xxx table and update all of the information to one source. What do you think? --Cryptic C62 · Talk 17:12, 3 October 2008 (UTC)
 * I'm fine with that since it is not likely that every source is going to agree perfectly about every small thing (as long as the nubase is the most comprehensive one). Nergaal (talk) 19:36, 3 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Clarification: Which solution are you supporting? Continuing to use Nubase for the articles, and leave the tables alone? Or revamp all the tables to conform to one source? --Cryptic C62 · Talk 20:20, 3 October 2008 (UTC)
 * If you believe that Nubase is the most comprehensive source for this, then go ahead and update all the isotope pages with the information there. Nevertheless, if say an isotope is currently listed in one of the pages, but not in the nubase, don't delete it. Clearl state in the lsit that Nubase is the main reference used, but add a label such as "†" to the isotopes not in there and indicate in the notes that it is not discussed in the primary source. The reason why I always prefer to state in the element articles "there are at least x isotopes" is because over time people observe unknown isotopes, but since the 49th isotope of element y is not really that notable references such as nubase might not update the information more than once a decade. Does that make sense? Nergaal (talk) 00:54, 5 October 2008 (UTC)
 * I noticed this as well and find it annoying. I'm not sure if one source can be used for this. You will likely have to combine sources to get everything you need. --mav (talk) 19:15, 5 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Blarg, for now I'll just use vague wording like we did with Iridium. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 02:29, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

Decays FROM?
The "Decay Product" column at the bottom of the element infoboxes is very interesting! However I would like to be able to visit, say, the Uranium page and see a link to Protactinium 233 in the isotope Uranium 233 row. As it stands, there's no way to find that protactinium decays to Uranium without searching with Google or already knowing the Proactinum page. Is this feasible? Thanks 76.106.15.180 (talk) 21:07, 6 October 2008 (UTC)


 * Sounds like an interesting idea. In the meantime, you may find decay chain useful. --Itub (talk) 05:03, 7 October 2008 (UTC)


 * Indeed - decay chains are very interesting and something that our 'Isotopes of ...' articles are ideally supposed to cover. Sadly, those articles are almost all just starter pages and the WikiProject that created them no longer is active. They are still part of our WikiProject but they are much lower priority for us. However, as the element pages get better we will inevitably start to focus on the 'Isotope of ...' articles more (along with 'Compounds of ...). --mav (talk) 00:01, 8 October 2008 (UTC)


 * Bad idea! Some isotopes may form from multiple parent isotopes (first example that comes into my mind is an isotope that results both from a beta decay, but also from an alpha one; plus, there might be 2 types of betas). Nergaal (talk) 00:39, 8 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Improving our 'isotope of' articles is a bad idea? --mav (talk) 02:22, 9 October 2008 (UTC)
 * How about 128Xe? 128Te undergoes β−β−, 128I undergoes β−, 128Cs undergoes β+. All three of these paths produce 128Xe. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 01:41, 8 October 2008 (UTC)


 * Some isotopes can be formed in two or three ways, just like some isotopes can decay in two or three ways. I don't see that as a problem. We already handle the latter situation by splitting the table cell or putting two modes on the same cell. We could do the same with the cell for "decays from". As long as we don't include fission, it should be manageable. --Itub (talk) 04:57, 8 October 2008 (UTC)


 * I think there might end up being more possibilities for formation and decay pathways always have a preferred one. Also, I am not sure why it would be relevant enough to put it in the infobox and not into the isotope page instead. Anyways, if someone wants to do it and the result will not clog up the box unnecessary while it would look pleasant, I won't be against. Nergaal (talk) 06:41, 8 October 2008 (UTC)


 * I agree, this may fit better in the detailed table at the isotopes page because otherwise the infobox at the element could become be too crowded. (For some reason I was thinking about isotope pages even when the original poster was talking about the element infobox.) --Itub (talk) 07:31, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

what about adding nuclear spins? Nergaal (talk) 06:53, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Merging of lists of type List of elements by XXX
As first mentioned above, it appears that the proposal to combine the lists has gained consensus. I am glad to do the necessary legwork to merge and fix sorting (having extensive experience with the sortable tables after cleaning up the lists in Category:Lists of radio stations in the United States). All that needs to be determined is (a) which columns to include, (b) what order to put said columns in, and (c) what column to have the initial sort by (atomic number, I presume?). JPG-GR (talk) 20:42, 28 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I would suggest first to try and have two pages: by physical properties and by atomic properties:
 * Z, symbol, boiling point, melting point, critical point, mohs scale (of allotrope stable at SCT)?, appearance (image?), notes (say the allotrope)
 * after that also add: heat of fusion, heat of vaporization, specific ehat capacity?
 * Z, symbol, name, atomic mass, period, group, chemical series,
 * later to be added: electronic structure(unsortable), most common oxidations state, pauli electronegativity, first ionization energy, atomic radius, covalent radius,

Also, try to not touch the present tables, but instead move them to an archive of the talk-page of the future articles. Also, please do not touch the two FLs yeat (by name and by symbol). Nergaal (talk) 23:30, 28 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I think 11-13 columns, as suggested, is just a slight bit of overkill. JPG-GR (talk) 00:04, 29 August 2008 (UTC)
 * first line in each list contains the info that would appear from mergers; second line stuff that we might want to add after the mergers. so for now you should get 8 & 7. after mergers more might be added if necessary. Ah, and one more thing: thanks for the help! Nergaal (talk) 00:24, 29 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I've created List of elements by atomic properties & List of elements by physical properties with what I meant.
 * Whether now or later, 11-13 columns is overkill. Surely much of this info can be found in the articles themselves. JPG-GR (talk) 01:07, 29 August 2008 (UTC)
 * What do you mean by "chemical series"? That's a wikipedianism with no weight in the real world, and should be eradicated. --Itub (talk) 09:02, 29 August 2008 (UTC)
 * agree Nergaal (talk) 14:54, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

(de-indent) Got some free time this week and am going to finally start trying to get this new table generated. Here's the problem, though - I've got complete info (in an easy to use format) for names, symbols, atomic numbers, atomic masses, periods, groups, chemical series, and etymology. All of the other stuff... not so much. If anyone can point me to a reference source that I can pull info for the rest quickly (basically, other than looking at 118 different Wikipedia articles), it would be helpful. Thanks! JPG-GR (talk) 05:44, 12 October 2008 (UTC)


 * Did you look at Chemical elements data references?

page semiprotections
I've noticed that at least 6 of the most visited pages are frequently vandalized. Perhaps we should keep in mind this and get some kind of long semiprotection for them. I got only 3 of the pages protected for only 1 week. Nergaal (talk) 03:04, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

List of elements by atomic properties
thoughts? anybody knows a way to transform html's into metawiki code? Nergaal (talk) 19:07, 14 October 2008 (UTC)


 * found it. It would be really nice if I could get some feedback before I proceed any further. Is everything in place/is something missing? Should I get rid of any of the entries? Also, I have used the reference data pages. Are they reliable? Nergaal (talk) 17:21, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

Actinium
which was discovered in 1899, the earliest discovered of the radioactive elements. Do Uranium and Thorim not count as radioactive elements? For me this statement makes no sense.--Stone (talk) 19:08, 15 October 2008 (UTC)


 * Maybe it was the earliest non-primordial radioactive element? --Itub (talk) 20:00, 15 October 2008 (UTC)


 * I've worked on Timeline of chemical elements discoveries and its entries are quite accurate. You can see there that it wasn't technically the first reported radioactive element, but it was the first non-primordial one to be isolated. Nevertheless, the radioactivity was discovered on polonium or radium first though. Nergaal (talk) 20:15, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

Than I change it in that way!--Stone (talk) 20:23, 15 October 2008 (UTC)


 * Is the article now C-Class or still Start?--Stone (talk) 12:57, 16 October 2008 (UTC)


 * I don't really like how short the article still is, but I don't think there is much more to say about it. Still, a small section about actinoids could be added too. Nergaal (talk) 14:39, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

Electron shell diagrams
An anonymous user has been adding these to elements. Rhodium currently shows one. I am not sure how much value if any they add to the articles. What do others think? --John (talk) 03:26, 6 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Well, they are pretty and look interesting to kids learning chemistry. But yeah, they kinda represent an outdated idea about atomic structure. That said, I don't see much harm in having them - at least for the oddball heavier elements that have non-standard arrangements of electrons. Diagrams of orbital/sub-orbital arrangements and/or filling orders are far more useful, IMO, but can be scary-looking to somebody not familiar with them. --mav (talk) 00:20, 8 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Yes, I made the point to the user adding them that they don't really show anything like a true picture of atomic structure. I will take them down and reference this discussion unless anyone objects. --John (talk) 00:35, 8 October 2008 (UTC)
 * I've removed them. They were well-intentioned but over-simplified reality. --John (talk) 03:44, 8 October 2008 (UTC)
 * They have been re-added!--Stone (talk) 18:50, 18 October 2008 (UTC)
 * I saw. I will re-remove them, and refer to this discussion. --John (talk) 19:05, 18 October 2008 (UTC)

Osmium B-class review
I wanted to ask if there is anything more I can do for the osmium article?--Stone (talk) 17:39, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

Competetive collaboration?
After the epic failure of our previous COTM, I've thought of an idea to spice things up: A competetive collaboration. The idea would be for us to pick a series of articles that could potentially become a Featured Topic, such as a period, group, or something like the platinum family. We then ask another math/science wikiproject, such as WP:PHYSICS or WP:CHEMS to find a similar series of articles to work on.

The two groups of articles would ideally be the same size and have the same number of FAs/GAs. For examples, WP:PHYSICS might do Radioactive decay, which, assuming it covered the classical decays, emission processes, and capture processes, would encompass 15 articles, none of which are FA or GA. We could then do lanthanoids, which would encompass 16 articles, none of which are FA or GA.

After the two Wikiprojects agree on two groups of articles to work on, we would announce a date on which we would both start working. The first project to successfully make the group a Featured Topic would win. Is anyone interested? --Cryptic C62 · Talk 15:20, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

Several thoughts: (1) if you manage to get another project involved it would be impressive; (2) I am totally in for FT/GTs, but I think it is more realisthic to go for either group 1 or group 4 elements; (3) the failure of the previous COTM was IMO because it is quite boring to work on cleaning-up articles; (4) the next COTM should have articles that more than 1 user is interested in really keen on working on (as was the case for yttrium, iridium, or germanium), but probably not a huge element (unless a significant number of users are really willing to go for it). Nergaal (talk) 16:04, 21 October 2008 (UTC)


 * epic failure of our previous COTM' Do you really think it failed 100%? The list was 8 items long and now its 4 and aluminium is not part of the list anymore, so it was only 90% failure. But I also think that single elements are better for COTM than cleanup tasks. There are many like zinc and aluminium which needed a urgent upgrade.--Stone (talk) 08:20, 22 October 2008 (UTC)


 * Epic failure? We had 8 items on the clean-up list and all but one of them (metal) received significant improvement; 4 items fell off the list and frankly I don't know why at least 2 others didn't fall off (I think there is a bug or something). On top of that many other articles were improved and cleaned-up while dozens others were evaluated to see what issues they had. I personally also fixed several dozen nav images and identified a whole bunch that need to be recreated from scratch. Just because an effort is diffuse and thus not as plainly noticeable does not make it a failure. That said, I don't think COTM should settle on any one method. It should try to do things a bit differently each time; otherwise it gets boring. But Nergaal does have a point that we should select articles to improve that have more interest among project participants. We should therefore direct our COTM effort (however formulated - your contest idea should be tried) on critical (per the report) or vital articles and their groups. The more informal collaboration with iridium is more of a model in this regard. Less important stuff can be done on a completely informal basis; COTM should spotlight collaborative effort on areas of greatest need. --mav (talk) 02:45, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

List of elements
The featured lists List of elements by symbol and List of elements by name been nominated for removal. You can comment here and here. This is being done so that the lists (always six others) can be merged into the master List of elements. Consensus for this was established a few months ago, but never done. Anyone who would like to perform the actual merge (because someone familiar with the subject should do it) can contact me. -- Scorpion0422 22:58, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

Scandium
Now scandium needs a look. Might be ready to become b-class.--Stone (talk) 07:38, 24 October 2008 (UTC)
 * I rated it B-class.--Stone (talk) 20:33, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

Third edition!
It is with great excitement that I announce the third edition of the Elements Report! While the global economy may be struggling, we're riding a huge wave of page views - up more than 75% from August! While I have no way of knowing for sure, I hypothesize that this surge may be due to new high school and college chemistry students. I certainly remember that when I started my first chem course, I looked up elements all the time both out of curiosity and the need for specific information. Carbon, sodium, helium, and fluorine are examples of elements I heard about very early on in my chemistry course, and they just so happen to have more than doubled in page views. I'll wait to see what happens in the following months' reports to try to confirm this theory.

Two notable changes in this month's report: First, I will no longer refresh the Critical Articles table as those articles get improved. Instead, I'm going to try simply crossing them out. This will give a greater sense of accomplishment and progress than the 'bottomless pit' of critical articles. Also, as time goes on and critical articles get improved, the actual page view distribution will approach the post-critical distribution, rather than having both change over independently.

Second, if you take a look at Image:Periodic table by page views.PNG, you'll notice I've increased the boundaries for each class. With the increase in activity, it would have been impossible to use the old system, as not a single article had less than 5000 views! --Cryptic C62 · Talk 02:15, 6 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Cool - thanks. :) --Daniel Mayer (mav) (talk) 17:36, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

Zinc
The zinc article needs also a look! I tried to upgrade it a little, but the nutrition and biology section is far from my knowledge. Is there sombody with the enough biology to have a look? --Stone (talk) 10:25, 31 October 2008 (UTC)


 * I just put it on my todo list for FA-push but it might take some time for me to get around to it. I'll start reading up on it soon. --mav (talk) 01:53, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Progress of project
Neat historic for 2008! Nergaal (talk) 10:08, 9 November 2008 (UTC)


 * February 2008


 * June 2008 (FL split)


 * July 2008 (C split)


 * Present

Neato! A graph showing article quality over time would be most interesting (C62, hint, hint :) --mav (talk) 01:40, 11 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Heh, sure thing. I was planning on making a line graph after enough data accumulated from the reports, but I'll make one for these, too. Nergaal, it appears there's an item missing from the second chart. Shouldn't it include the FLs? --Cryptic C62 · Talk 05:23, 12 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Hrrm... not particularly interesting, but still... here's a line graph showing the categories over time... --Cryptic C62 · Talk 20:56, 12 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Wow, a decrease by more than 33% in start articles is really neat! Next edition try to add the lists too. Nergaal (talk) 22:28, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Placement of history section
Per WikiProject Elements/Guidelines, the ==History== section is normally placed pretty far down in the article. Yet, this is often the most accessible section and most interesting for the non-specialist. Per the Make technical articles accessible guideline, I think we should put ==History== further up in the article. The biggest downside of this that I see, is that we would be more limited on image placement for the history section if we do this. What does everybody think? --mav (talk) 02:20, 11 November 2008 (UTC)


 * At least for the lesser known elements I totally support this. For stuff like oxygen or carbon I am not 100% sure it is better, but for something like cerium I think it is better to start with the history. As for the image thing, I don't necessarily believe it is a big issue since this section usually needs one or two small images for the discoverers which ca easily be placed on the left. I would guess it is a bigger issue for the characteristics section since here the images may not necessarily be small, and the subsections are usually shorter than the the history one. Nergaal (talk) 04:08, 11 November 2008 (UTC)


 * I'v always thought that History should be the first section, not only for accessibility, but to "get it out of the way" before delving into the "core" of the article, which is usually the chemistry and applications. This is at least the approach that textbooks like Greenwood take. --Itub (talk) 07:07, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

I've found a trick which solves the image placement of images on the right side, but by the infobox (which means that even if images are right at the beginning, they can still be placed anywhere). Check the niobium article to see the effect. The syntax is:

[insert right-aligned image] Nergaal (talk) 18:25, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Talk:Hydrogen#Split_proposal
Hi members of the WikiProject Elements, we need some participation to reach a conclusion, can you please have a look at Talk:Hydrogen and join the disccussion ? Thanks Mion (talk) 21:22, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

Element sample images
Is there a way to upload decent quality images of element samples? For example the yttrium one that is going to appear on the mainpage or most of those that are in use in the infoboxes now like this one Image:Dy,66.jpg are of very, very poor quality. Nergaal (talk) 22:45, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
 * You can look for a free image source but you probably won't find anything approaching a comprehensive collection. I found one set of samples that could be used to retake better photos but it costs over a &pound;1000. Would be neat to have but that is a bit pricey. --mav (talk) 03:43, 15 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Please tell me that these pictures are free Nergaal (talk) 06:14, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
 * I seriously doubt that they are and don't see any notice saying that the images can be used freely. You can ask but I would be surprised if they granted anything more than a non-commercial or site-specific license (both of which are prohibited here). That only leaves fair use but b/c we have alternate images they would be deleted per our fair use policy. --mav (talk) 06:52, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Hm. Those prices aren't so bad when you are only looking at one element at a time. I went ahead and bought the yttrium ampoule. If it arrives before the 24th, I'll take a photo and upload it. If this site has good service and good products, I might buy more element samples. --mav (talk) 07:14, 15 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Check this: I compiled a price list sorted by price of the samples. Perhaps someone (cough, Nergaal) wouldn't mind going through and bolding the articles he thinks are most in need of free images? With this, we (and any other editors who feel like giving us a gift) can easily see what would be a good purchase for whatever we can afford. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 03:44, 17 November 2008 (UTC)


 * I don't think that buying samples is an efficient solution. I believe it is much more efficient for somebody to try to email to companies that have samples like this and see if they were willing to release at least some of the element photos to wikipedia. Most of the companies will be greedy and say no, but maybe somebody might be ok to donate images to wikipedia. ps: you can actually buy while phosphorus? I thought it is pretty much impossible to get that stuff due to reguations. Nergaal (talk) 04:23, 17 November 2008 (UTC)


 * We would have to ask them to register an account, upload the images, and release them under one of the compatible licenses. We can't do it ourselves, and I'd imagine they would be reluctant to go through all the trouble, especially since in our case, having the free images would mean we wouldn't buy the stuff. It's in their best interest to hold onto the images and try to get us to buy the samples. You can go ahead and email them if you want, it just seems like a waste of time to me. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 17:07, 17 November 2008 (UTC)


 * As far as I remember, one of the licensing options you get when uploading an image is that the copyright holder has agreed to post the image. This means, if one of the companies agrees by email to release the images on their website we can go an upload them ourselves. And I didn't say it is very likely for them to agree, but at least some of them might say ok to at least a part of the images IMO. Nergaal (talk) 17:54, 17 November 2008 (UTC)


 * The sample arrived yesterday and I took a photo this morning. This is the best image I can get with my current camera (and some GIMPing):
 * [[Image:Y-39-yttrium-sample-crop.jpg|300px|Yttrium metal sample]]
 * I think the darker parts are a wee bit of oxidation but I'm not sure. Images swapped in article and on TFA blub. --mav (talk) 16:21, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

Bromine and Nickel
I think bromine should be B-class (one up) and nickel C-class (one down), any comments?--Stone (talk) 22:19, 18 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Nickel is certainly only C-class and needs work. I would hesitate before promoting bromine, as it seems borderline: a little more work and it would be a clear B-class (if not better!) Physchim62 (talk) 23:35, 18 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Nickel needs some cleanup, and needs a loooot more on the compounds section so it should be C. Bromine is a pretty important element so I would prefer having more stuff into the article before rating it as a B. Nergaal (talk) 00:30, 19 November 2008 (UTC)


 * I promoted bromine.--Stone (talk) 20:32, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

4th row "transition metals"
does anybody know for sure, or have a good reference where it says that the elements after rutherfordium are actually TMs? Nergaal (talk) 23:07, 8 October 2008 (UTC)


 * Per IUPAC we can consider elements in groups 3 to 11/12 as TMs. Per my understanding, groups and periods are defined as columns and rows, respectively, in the periodic table. Granted group 3 is ambiguous, but the others don't appear to be. Is it a stretch for us to connect those two factoids to come-up with a definition of TMs? I don't know... --mav (talk) 02:20, 9 October 2008 (UTC)


 * I just know that the 4th row elements tend to act more like actinoids since the d-orbitals contract enough to get below the f-ones. This would mean that their chemical reactivity is generated by the f-orbitals, i.e. same as the actinoids. Nergaal (talk) 02:32, 9 October 2008 (UTC)


 * My grandfather is a chemist by profession. I don't know how familiar he is with IUPAC nomenclature, but perhaps he might have some idea. I'll email him and see what he says. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 03:06, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

I feel confident that elements having d or f electrons are properly considered to be transition metals whether they are synthetic or naturally occurring. Elements in the sixth row starting with lanthanum are often called rare earths or lanthanides and elements in the seventh row starting with actinium are called actinides but both groups are also properly included as transition metals. d electrons and f electrons have rather important effects on the properties of the compounds that they form. This is because of the directional characteristics of their orbitals and because atoms with d or f electrons occur so widely in more than one stable oxidation state. The variable oxidation states arise because stable states are associated with more than one number of electrons retained in a d or f shell of any one of these elements. Moreover, because of the significant screening of nuclear charge by the d and f electrons on outer s and p electrons, elements having filled d shells such as tin and antimoney exemplify polyvalent ions that depend on variable retention of p electrons. --Roger Araujo

Elements 104–112 are transition metals by the IUPAC definition given a couple of sections up. Nobody has a clue about their chemistry, as they're only made a couple of atoms at a time! Physchim62 (talk) 15:20, 10 October 2008 (UTC)


 * That being said, I think we should give elements 109 to 111 the same fill color in the Periodic table as the other TMs. --mav (talk) 14:35, 11 October 2008 (UTC)
 * @Mav: No, there was a reason that I uncoloured 109 to 111 some months ago: Their chemistry has not been determined yet (unlike elements 104-108 and 112, which have been shown to behave like metals experimentally). So this edit should be undone IMO. --Roentgenium111 (talk) 22:00, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

world production what ever svg
Is this OK? It is easy to change and it is SVG and it is a creation of a still active editor! If something is to improve or any other coment would be welcome.--Stone (talk) 23:49, 17 November 2008 (UTC)


 * So US produces between 40 and 50% of the world producton, or between 30 an 40%? Nergaal (talk) 02:23, 18 November 2008 (UTC)
 * The production is between 35% and 45%.--Stone (talk) 05:46, 18 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Now it is with improved colors!--Stone (talk) 22:33, 25 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Way cool! I'd like to see that in many ===Occurrence=== sections. --mav (talk) 04:51, 1 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Simply edit the svg in a text editor! if you change landxx id="ca" to land50 id="ca" Canada gets 50% color or make landxx id="gr to land2 id="gr"  Greece is 2.5%. I have to write a little howto to make the world production of XXXX .svg usable for everybody. One task stll opene is to aske somebody to get a colour scale suitable for the colourblind.--Stone (talk)

COM for December
I nominate the blemish article zinc (currently C-class, top-importance, and highly viewed). Any seconds? --mav (talk) 02:59, 27 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Good idea! But I would suggest for every 5 or 10 edits in zinc there should me one edit at Cadmium.--Stone (talk) 05:50, 27 November 2008 (UTC)
 * I'm down with Zinc. We're running out of easy Start class articles, so we might as well get used to working on the more difficult elements, and Zinc seems like a fine challenge for us! It seems fairly well referenced, but it could definitely use some cleaning up and reorganization (why is there a list of applications in the compounds section?). I don't see why we should expand the collaboration to two articles. I think we tried that before and it didn't really work that well. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 06:37, 27 November 2008 (UTC)
 * You might be right!--Stone (talk) 07:10, 27 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Done.--mav (talk) 05:03, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

My favorite books about zinc: It is not only the history section which needs improvment, but the Calamine brass and Orichalcum from roman times need more than an upgrade. --Stone (talk) 22:28, 3 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Zinc Porter Handbook 1991
 * Metallurgy John Percy 1861
 * The Early History of Brass Aitken 1866
 * A History of Inventions, Discoveries, and Origins Porter Beckmann 1846
 * The lead-in needs a look, I tried to put the info in, but a native speaker would help alot.--Stone (talk) 09:28, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Periodic table
The change in the Periodic table (standard) on 22:16, 2 November 2008 by 91.84.211.112 included the 8 period elements 119 and 120. I think we should delete them again. --Stone (talk) 20:41, 2 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Done. --mav (talk) 17:39, 3 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Why do you remove elements 119 and 120, yet leave element 117 in the table? All three of them are undiscovered, and there were already attempts to create 119 and 120 (according to their element pages), unlike for 117. For consistency's sake, we should either include all three of them, or neither. --Roentgenium111 (talk) 21:07, 3 December 2008 (UTC)
 * 117 is a gap, so it is more natural to include than the elements beyond the heaviest known (which are essentially unbounded). --Itub (talk) 21:41, 3 December 2008 (UTC)
 * It looks nicer and a hole in the bricked wall would raise questions. 119 and 120 will be added if there is need to do so.--Stone (talk) 21:55, 3 December 2008 (UTC)
 * And even 126 was attempts to create it, but I would not include it.--Stone (talk) 22:00, 3 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Historically, gaps have been very important for the development of the periodic table: I see no reason why we should ignore the element between numbers 116 and 118. Physchim62 (talk) 22:04, 3 December 2008 (UTC)


 * "a hole in the bricked wall would raise questions" - exactly, but that would be a good thing IMO. Isn't science about asking questions? If it is technically possible, we could whiten the box for 117, yet keep the link to Uus there. This way, people who wonder about the gap could find out about Uus by moving the mouse there. I think factual correctness is more important than aesthetics. Also, the way it looks now, it might seem the periodic table is complete, because there is no "obvious place" to put new elements. By either removing 117 or adding 119 and 120 we would show that the periodic table is open for extensions. @element 126: this would be difficult to add because it is supposed to lie in the g-block. For 119 and 120 however it is clear where to put them, as the IP user adding them showed.--Roentgenium111 (talk) 11:10, 4 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Uus is already labeled as "unknown" by not having a border. I think that is better than deleting it altogether, although the exact color and border scheme used to show its status can certainly be changed. --Itub (talk) 11:14, 4 December 2008 (UTC)
 * I know it is labeled as "Unknown". But 119 and 120 were also labeled this way, yet were deleted completely. Also, the key for "Unknown" is easily overlooked by the casual reader, with about twenty different keys.--Roentgenium111 (talk) 21:45, 7 December 2008 (UTC)
 * You are right it is not so easy to see in the colour sceme used, but we might be able to upgrade to make it clear. --Stone (talk) 22:03, 7 December 2008 (UTC)
 * We might give each discovered element a background colour, also those whose chemistry is not yet known. A lighter version of the colour of its "expected" chemical group would be a possibility. So the only object with white background would be Uus. Also, I would put "Uus" and "117" in brackets in the 117 box, to make it clearer it's undiscovered. Would this be fine with everybody? --Roentgenium111 (talk) 17:42, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

The same user als upgraded the Template:Compact periodic table with the two additional elements.--Stone (talk) 18:17, 4 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Fixed. Colors fixed as well. --mav (talk) 01:53, 6 December 2008 (UTC)

Compound templates
Has this ever been brought up? If not, what are everyone's thoughts on this (I just whipped it up quickly because I don't want to put too much time into something that could be rejected)

Thricecube (talk) 06:12, 4 January 2009 (UTC)


 * That's fine with me. Nergaal (talk) 18:15, 4 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Seems like a good idea, especially since the Compounds sections are pretty weak in a lot of our articles. How should we/you choose which compounds to display in the infobox? --Cryptic C62 · Talk 18:48, 4 January 2009 (UTC)


 * 2/3 of the elements have up to 10-15 articles on compounds so for these it should be easy. Nergaal (talk) 07:58, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

Now that I look at it again, I recommend not using • or · to separate the compounds, as bullets are actually used in the formulas for certain compounds, such as zinc burate: 3ZnO•2B2O3 --Cryptic C62 · Talk 00:14, 7 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Some thoughts:
 * This might be placed well in the compounds section of the element articles. For those cases, a more vertical layout that can go beside article text might be a bonus. The horizontal layout would primarily be useful on the articles of the compounds themselves.
 * If this becomes a standard, what criteria do we use for inclusion for compounds of elements with many compounds and/or compound articles, e.g. oxygen?
 * Would pipe symbols ( | ) be useful as separators?
 * I've changed the bullets to pipes. The ones on the left are bolded, the ones on the right are not. I like the look of the bolded pipe best.
 * { { Nihiltres | talk | log } } 05:17, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

Zinc and Nickel
I think both are back to B-Class and I changed the C to B. --Stone (talk) 20:40, 12 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Zinc doesn't even have a compounds section... --Cryptic C62 · Talk 22:15, 12 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Cryptic you are right, but most of the important compounds are either in the applications section or all over the article.--Stone (talk) 06:02, 13 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Added some content to the compound section. --Stone (talk) 08:09, 13 January 2009 (UTC)


 * I went to the library yesterday and took some notes from Perry's Handbook of Inorganic Compounds. I'll add it to the article later today. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 14:00, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Vanadium's table image is broken


The current image fails to highlight the element within the table.

Just a head's up.--Honeymane Heghlu meH QaQ jajvam 05:17, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Periodic table (extended)
Periodic table (extended) has been nominated for deletion. 76.66.198.171 (talk) 04:28, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

Uhs (167) - Ust (173)
See Articles for deletion/Unhexseptium. Elements 167 to 173 have been sent for deletion as pure speculation. Note that even the chemical properties cannot be predicted, since some theories say that no electrons can be added to the electron shells beyond 139. 76.66.198.171 (talk) 00:49, 16 January 2009 (UTC)
 * What theories are those? Electrons can be added at least till their binding energy exceeds 2 x 511 kev = 1022 kev, at which point they become unstable to positron-electron pair production. But the Z for that is in the 150's, and nobody has claimed to see the process except in heavy nuclei collider experiments. And it's not clear to me what happens to the atom if that happens, anyway. S  B Harris 00:46, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

Wonky bot
Recently, Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Chemistry articles by quality, the page I use to maintain the report and the various periodic tables, has not been working properly. Normally, the WP 1.0 bot periodically updates the lists, and I use the diffs to quickly figure out which article qualities have changed. Lately, however, the bot has been removing/adding/shuffling around the entries, making it impossible for me to figure out what's happening other than by going through and checking each element one by one.

So, for the time being, if you guys reassess an article (or happen to notice someone else doing so), please be so kind as to mention it here. If the WP bot starts working properly again, I'll leave a notice here. Thanks guys. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 05:02, 20 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Just use Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Chemical elements articles by quality log. Nergaal (talk) 22:41, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

Radon question
Is anybody interested in bringing it to FA level? It is complete, but it needs cleanup and some more referencing (in sections I don't particularly know or care much about). Nergaal (talk) 03:22, 30 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Of the nobles, argon could use the most attention. It is currently way too short and each section is inadequate (applications section is mostly a list). --mav (talk) 05:37, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

Copy editing of vanadium article
I need some help with the copy editing of the vanadium article. This is the only thing preventing it from being a Good Article. A native speeker or two to fix the worst things I did to english gramar would be a big help for me. Thanks --Stone (talk) 22:23, 3 February 2009 (UTC)


 * I've been somewhat busy lately, but I'll try to help out in the next couple of days. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 00:17, 4 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Thanks for all the help! Was a good GAN and the article has really improved.--Stone (talk) 21:43, 4 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Credit goes to Rifleman, I suppose. I didn't even touch the article yet! --Cryptic C62 · Talk 01:03, 5 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Sorry I think I introduced two : where non would have been enough! I wanted to thank all members of the project who helped!--Stone (talk) 06:05, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

Call for better elemental photos
I just wanted to highlight my post on the 'chemical element' talk page about the quality of photos of elements.

I didn't want to duplicate so please see my post here: Talk:Chemical element --CharlesC (talk) 11:45, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Arsenic
The compounds section is still weak, but the rest is on a good way. Has anybody good suggestions for improvments? After addition to the compounds section I would like to promote it to B.--Stone (talk) 21:56, 28 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Added to the compounds section a little bit and will make it a B-Class tomorrow, if noone objects.--Stone (talk) 20:02, 29 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Issues:

--Cryptic C62 · Talk 16:00, 30 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Various paragraphs are missing refs: Chemical 1 DONE, Occurence 2 DONE , Wood preservation 3 DONE , Precautions 3/4/5, Arsenic in drinking water 5, Occupational exposures 2
 * Inline citation needs to be touched up, particularly in Toxicity. DONE
 * Testing for exposure is comprised entirely of a blockquote?
 * Massive number of journal refs without DOI or URL. DONE
 * References and Notes shouldn't be separate. DONE
 * Thanks, will try to get that! Copied the suggestions into the comments of the arsenic talk page.--Stone (talk) 08:25, 1 February 2009 (UTC)


 * 22k of text were added to the toxicology section. I think we must have a separated article for that.--Stone (talk) 23:37, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

I copied all the text in toxicology to Arsenic toxicity and found out a minute later that there is a Arsenic poisoning article already I think a merge between the two would be good. I will try to reduce the toxicology section in the article to two paragraphes, like it is in the plutonium article. A second point is that the Arsenic contamination of groundwater is also a bit long for the fact that we have already a whole article on that topic. Has anybody a good suggestion how to proced? --09:26, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

COM to COQ?
This is not a very big WikiProject yet. Perhaps it was too soon to have a Collaboration of the Month. How about we accept reality and change that to Collaboration of the Quarter? This will better-enable us to have more productive collaborations on harder articles (like zinc has proven to be, not to mention carbon and *gulp* periodic table). Adoptions would continue to be for adhoc smaller collaborations where one person does most of the work on easier articles and other members help a bit. What do you think? --mav (talk) 02:13, 2 February 2009 (UTC)


 * As nice as it would be to collaboratively churn out 12 GAs/FAs per year, perhaps that's not really realistic if we focus on critical articles and the like, but only 4 collaborations seems unproductive. Why don't we extend the current collaboration to February and try a bimestrial system first? --Cryptic C62 · Talk 05:09, 2 February 2009 (UTC)


 * I think christmas and the FAC of the plutonium article are the main reasons why the COM of zinc took that long, or was started then took a pause and restarted with more speed. To reach the goal of the COM within a month and prolog it when necessary is good way to deal with the problem of the small number of participants and the irregular attandace in the COM.--Stone (talk) 12:48, 2 February 2009 (UTC)


 * OK - So long as everybody understands that a particular article may be the COM in two or more consecutive months, then I agree. We will keep COM as is but without an expectation that we will finish in a single month. That said, should zinc be the COM for a third month in a row, or is it close enough for us to start another COM and move zinc to the adoption area? --mav (talk) 01:23, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Personally, the advantage of working on the elements project is that there is a finite end-point (only 110++ articles), compared with the chemicals project (theoretically no limit to the number of possible compounds). I see the collaboration, content-wise, as limited to the same few contributors: mav, nergaal, stone, etc. A club of three+ is not much of a club? I try to help where I can, but apart from stylistic issues, it's much easier for me to write about the elements I'm familiar with as a platinum group chemist. --Rifleman 82 (talk) 05:35, 3 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Of course, the element articles themselves are the most important, but there are a number of supporting articles (groups, periods, tables, lists, etc) and potentially several hundred daughter articles to the elements (isotopes of..., compounds of..., history of..., etc.). Not to mention all the individual isotope articles we have. Even so, this is still a fairly focused project ; if it were created today, it would likely be a taskforce of WikiProject Chemistry vs a full blown WikiProject. Please consider listing articles you are working on as adoptions so we can more easily know where we can help you a bit. :) COMs will continue to be for the critical articles, per C62's reports. We just may need to list the same article a few times. --mav (talk) 03:51, 4 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Once again, personal experience: edits beget more edits; dormant articles remain dormant. I usually start editing when I see someone edit an article on my watchlist. That's how I got to editing nickel and argon. I've recently copyedited vanadium per Stone's request, too. --Rifleman 82 (talk) 03:57, 4 February 2009 (UTC)


 * My interest is in the nickel block. I've worked with compounds of all three, but my experience skews me toward organomet and catalysis. The problem is that I might overstate/misjudge the relative importance of these compounds. I split off liquid nitrogen too; once again that's what I've worked with. --Rifleman 82 (talk) 04:05, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Hm. I just noticed that Chemistry Collaboration of the Month wasn't used in all of 2008. I think we should use that page to discuss future collaborations; any article covered under our umbrella that is selected as the Chem COM will also be our COM. I just nominated tin for March. Please comment. --mav (talk) 15:29, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

Vandalism
The Template:Infobox tin has been vandalized, and I can not find the subtemplate which is resposible for the vandalism.--19:51, 11 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Looks OK to me now. Physchim62 (talk) 20:20, 11 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Not from my computer, might be the cash somewhere, but I wanted to know where the vandalism was put initially.--Stone (talk) 20:37, 11 February 2009 (UTC)
 * I found some mischief in and fixed it, but I still see the problem here.  Not in the pages mentioned below though.  I hope this is a cache thing now.  (BTW, digging through all those template souces wasn't fun.  Perhaps the main infoboxes could be constructed with optional fields instead, something like  perhaps?) Baccyak4H (Yak!) 20:52, 11 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Update It appears to be fixed, once I flushed my cache. Baccyak4H (Yak!) 20:57, 11 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Even the iridium page? Misha Vargas (talk) 21:35, 11 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Iridium is vandalism free for me: unfortunately this seems to be a cache problem. If you see a vandalized page, do a null-edit to the main element page to renew it (ie, load the page in an edit wndow, then save it without changing it). Physchim62 (talk) 21:42, 11 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Alright, thanks; I need to go educate myself about these "cache problems". Misha Vargas (talk) 23:20, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

Vandalism related to infoboxes?
There is vandalism which appears on the pages for gold, osmium, platinum, and iridium. This vandalism is not actually in the edit histories, and disappears when one removes the infobox. These infoboxes aren't readily accessible like some templates, so I have no idea what to do. The vandalism is this:

also the word *Bromo* means same sex male friends that will one day have intense passion with one another in the form of a threesome also called a *SquizManMitch*

Misha Vargas (talk) 20:32, 11 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Yep, this relates to the above section: tin has also been hit. I found some vandalism in , but there is some somewhere else.


 * I might suggest to not construct the element infoboxes this way; there is so much transclusion that this kind of thing is hard to find. Baccyak4H (Yak!) 20:42, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

Xe
There is a suggestion to move Blackwater Worldwide to Xe and moving that page to Xe (disambiguation) 76.66.196.229 (talk) 05:20, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

Notification of Science FAC symposium

 * See WikiProject Featured articles/Science FAC symposiumLing.Nut (talk&mdash;WP:3IAR) 13:05, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

Isotopes
The articles Iodine-129 and Uranium-232 are tagged as part of the elements project while most others (Talk:Iodine-125) are not. These show up as stub in our statistics! Should we include all or not.--Stone (talk) 19:05, 20 February 2009 (UTC)


 * I was going to construct a sub-template which to use for all the supporting articles, including the isotopes, but I never got to do it. Nergaal (talk) 21:06, 20 February 2009 (UTC)


 * How would a subtemplate work? What grading categories would those articles be in? I'm intrigued by the idea but think we need to discuss this a bit first. Certainly all element, group, & period articles are fully under this project as well as periodic table and chemical element. One can argue either way about whether isotopes/compounds/allotropes/history of... daughter articles are supporting articles or directly related in that they provide more detail on certain aspects of element articles (and should be well-synced with their parent articles). Articles on separate isotopes are more clearly supporting though. BTW, we will eventually have to figure out the best way to organize and flesh out all these other articles (esp. isotopes). Oxides might even be considered to be supporting articles to WP:ELEMENTS, but those, along with all other chemicals, are already taken care of by WP:CHEMS. --mav (talk) 19:00, 21 February 2009 (UTC)


 * The Chemical Element template is already a subpart of chemistry, isn't it? Nergaal (talk) 22:59, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

Coordinators' working group
Hi! I'd like to draw your attention to the new WikiProject coordinators' working group, an effort to bring both official and unofficial WikiProject coordinators together so that the projects can more easily develop consensus and collaborate. This group has been created after discussion regarding possible changes to the A-Class review system, and that may be one of the first things discussed by interested coordinators.

All designated project coordinators are invited to join this working group. If your project hasn't formally designated any editors as coordinators, but you are someone who regularly deals with coordination tasks in the project, please feel free to join as well. &mdash; Delievered by §hepBot  ( Disable )  on behalf of the WikiProject coordinators' working group at 05:21, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Article alerts
Everyone loves this so far, so I don't see why you guys wouldn't love it as well. Headbomb {{{sup|ταλκ}}κοντριβς – WP Physics} 02:00, 3 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Interesting. Testing on project page now. --mav (talk) 03:59, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Request: Chlorine-37, Argon-37
These two isotopes are of pivotal importance in neutrino detection.

Here are some refs (some of them might not be of use): I'll help with the neutrino-detection section if this project can start and bring the pages to WP:ELEMENT compliance. Headbomb {{{sup|ταλκ}}κοντριβς – WP Physics} 02:19, 3 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Neutrino detection and related:,, , , ,
 * Argon-37:, ,
 * Chlorine-37:,, , ,
 * Auger electron stuff: ,
 * If you're looking for a guide or a benchmark on individual isotope articles, Carbon-14 is the best assessed so far. Good luck! Physchim62 (talk) 02:57, 3 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Alright I've covered the neutrino aspects (Cl-37). I don't have a clue where to look for the rest of the info in the infbox, so if you could fill in the rest, that would be nice.Headbomb {{{sup|ταλκ}}κοντριβς – WP Physics} 06:39, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Question: A user removed WP Chemicals from Cl-37... Aren't isotopes within the scope of this project?Headbomb {{{sup|ταλκ}}κοντριβς – WP Physics} 07:19, 4 March 2009 (UTC)
 * The Elements WikiProject is a daughter of Wikiproject Chemicals. There's no need to tag the page with the parent if it's already tagged with the daughter. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 17:39, 4 March 2009 (UTC)
 * In WikiBureaucratical terms, and basically just for historical reasons, WP:ELEMENTS is a daughter of WP:CHEMISTRY and a sister of WP:CHEMICALS. In practical terms, I think I can help out a little on chlorine-37. I've certainly got the reference (somewhere) needed of the fact tag, and probably some info on variation of isotopic composition of natural chlorine that may as well be placed in the article. The non-integer atomic weight of chlorine is also hugely important in terms of the history of chemistry: it torpedoed Prout's hypothesis and was a major block in the acceptance of the physical reality of the atom among chemists. Physchim62 (talk) 18:20, 4 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Correct - WikiProject Elements is a daughter (nearly a taskforce) of WikiProject Chemistry. As for isotope articles - well, we never really have agreed on a format for them and references to build the prose of those articles are harder to find than for element articles (tabular data are pretty easy to find though). Carbon-14 does indeed look like a good model to build on.--mav (talk) 03:54, 8 March 2009 (UTC)