Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Physics/Archive March 2008

Consciousness causes collapse
Minor tussle. A number of the editors asserting ownership of this article are obvious fans of quantum mysticism and don't like having the science rug wisked out from under them. A few voices of reason could be helpful here. ScienceApologist (talk) 15:50, 11 February 2008 (UTC)


 * See also Measurement causes collapse, a continuation of the same effort. Melchoir (talk) 17:43, 26 February 2008 (UTC)


 * I looked at the article, and it started out okay but quickly ran into problems. I felt the urge to correct the misstatement that the quantum state applies only to a particle; it applies to any system.  The issue is interesting, but should be presented quite differently:  The problem (with the Copenhagen interpretation) is that the supposed universal laws of quantum theory apply to everything except the interaction between observed and observer, where separate rules are applied.  This matter has pretty much been resolved with the emergence of the modern quantum theory of measurement (quantum entanglement, etc.) which treats such interactions on the same basis as any others.  Unfortunately, I don't have time to rewrite the article, nor to deal with the likely ensuing edit wars. — DAGwyn (talk) 00:00, 27 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Well, I for one don't think the article is okay, as it serves no purpose different from Copenhagen interpretation, against which it plays the role of a POV fork. I've nominated it for deletion at Articles for deletion/Measurement causes collapse. Melchoir (talk) 06:17, 28 February 2008 (UTC)


 * For a thorough overview of why the article should not be deleted I cordially invite you to review the discussion pages. Again, it’s worth noting that the person who nominated the article for deletion did not offer any assistance in improving the article nor did they make a single edit.


 * Their sole contribution was a request that the article be deleted.


 * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Measurement_causes_collapse/archive_1


 * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Measurement_causes_collapse


 * Lordvolton (talk) 11:36, 2 March 2008 (UTC)


 * In and of itself, that's hardly worth noting...if someone thinks that an article shouldn't exist in the first place, why would they be expected to edit it and offer assistance in improving it? I don't know anything about this article in particular, I'm just saying that, in general, nominating an article for deletion, without trying to improve it, is not necessarily a sign of a bad editor. --Steve (talk) 21:25, 2 March 2008 (UTC)


 * I don't disagree with you, but my point is that if that person had followed a simple protocol of talking to the editors first and giving them the chance to address his concerns it would have been a civil and fair way of handling it. In this case, as I've pointed out in the discussion page(s), the person nominating the article for deletion is attempting to promote his view of the world by deleting any articles that disagrees with it. And that is evidenced by his unwillingness to engage editors in a meaningful dialogue before nominating articles for deletion.


 * And all of that is contrary to the spirit of wikipedia, where we're all working together toward the common good. Rather than working in isolation to promote our world view. Lordvolton (talk) 02:02, 3 March 2008 (UTC)


 * I first commented on the talk page explaining what I thought was wrong. The next day I added a prod template and warned you on your talk page about the prod, informing you what was happening and what you might do about it, which includes "explain why you disagree with the proposed deletion in your edit summary or on its talk page". You then removed the template with the comment "The copenhagen intepretation is a subset of the article and there for explanatory purposes." That was a perfectly reasonable action on your part. Still, since I did not believe this was a sufficient reason to keep the article under Wikipedia policy, I finally nominated for AfD and notified you, which is part of a common prod progression, per the warning text: "Even though removing the deletion notice will prevent deletion through the proposed deletion process, the article may still be deleted if it matches any of the speedy deletion criteria or it can be sent to Articles for Deletion, where it may be deleted if consensus to delete is reached." Although the AfD notice includes the phrasing "Please do not remove or change this AfD message until the issue is settled", you then tried to remove the AfD notice, at which point I was obliged to restore the notice and warn you not to try it again. Nor is this the first time you have attempted to unilaterally subvert Wikipedia's process. You tried to reverse a previous AfD result just a few days earlier and were similarly overruled.
 * After the AfD went up, you began to use the talk pages to respond. You have been repeatedly claiming that I am trying to promote a world view, despite my protests to the contrary and my attempts to explain the applicability of the WP:V and WP:NOR policies. You decry my lack of involvement in your article, despite my stated position that it is fundamentally unsalvageable and no editor could improve it barring the discovery of source material which does not appear to exist. And most recently you've been forming conspiracy theories concerning myself and another admin, William M. Connolley. These inflammatory actions do not constitute "meaningful dialogue". Rather, meaningful dialogue is grounded on sources, and it is welcome at any point of the deletion process, even now.
 * During this time I've attempted to keep focused on the article and on my own evaluation of it, rather than judge you, the editor. Where I thought it might be helpful to explain my personal motivations, I did that too, but that wasn't an invitation to attack me. Please see No personal attacks for the relevant policy. Melchoir (talk) 07:27, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

comparison of wikipedia's coverage with physics encyclopedia
A recent comparison of wikipedia's topical coverage with that of print encylopedias (Alexander Halavais & Derek Lackaff (2008) 'An Analysis of Topical Coverage of Wikipedia', Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 13 (2), 429–440) has compared wikipedia's coverage with that of Lerner & Trigg (eds., 2nd ed 1991) Encyclopedia of Physics. Dsp13 (talk) 12:17, 2 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Interesting article, thanks for the link! --Falcorian (talk) 19:41, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

--Pretty weak article. All it does is point up the fact that Wikipedia is a natural phenomena, like volcanoes, for example, worthy of observation like other natural phenomena. No conclusions of any moment - just that Wikipedia is different, not better not worse, and not for any reasons of significance. Brews ohare (talk) 20:18, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Help - user fighting to include original research
Hello fellow editors, this is a plea for help.

If you look at Talk:Vacuum permittivity, User:Brews ohare has been fighting to get the following original research claims (or things that imply one of these claims) included in a variety of Wikipedia articles (from vacuum permittivity to vacuum permeability to relative static permittivity):


 * That it is possible to measure the linear permittivity of vacuum (as opposed to its being &epsilon;0 by definition of the units, as sources like Jackson say); this is equivalent to the claim that it is possible to measure the speed of light in vacuum (as opposed to it being c by definition of the meter).


 * That there is more than one kind of vacuum, a "hypothetical" vacuum in which the speed of light is c vs. a "physical" vacuum in which the speed of light may differ. In particular, he wants to propose a (circular) definition of "vacuum" as the medium in which the speed of light in vacuum in c.

There are lots of logical problems with these claims, which I tried to explain to him on the above Talk page, but ultimately the objection from Wikipedia's standpoint is that he is unable to provide sources, hence the above claims are original research. (There are, of course, references to the contrary, but he claims to understand electromagnetic units better than Jackson, author of the canonical graduate textbook Classical Electrodynamics, as well as other authors.)

The problem is, I can't keep up with him on my own (especially as I'm about to leave town on a trip), nor do I want to be in a one-on-one revert battle. Please help, and look carefully at his [|user contributions] to see the variety of places he is trying to insert the above (or things tantamount to the above).

—Steven G. Johnson (talk) 14:42, 19 February 2008 (UTC)


 * It is certainly possible to perform the measurements. Indeed, the meter wasn't defined in terms of the vacuum speed of light until relatively recently, and it could only be so defined because people have measured the vacuum speed of light to very high precision.
 * As to two kinds of vacuum, that's a reasonable enough theory, not different in kind from the considerations behind renormalization. However, to the extent that it is not accepted by a significant portion of the research community, it shouldn't be in an encyclopedia article. — DAGwyn (talk) 23:45, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

PS. There is a separate argument as to whether the vacuum permittivity article should be called "electric constant". Standards organizations have begun to prefer the latter name, but have not stated that there is only one official name or that the older name is deprecated or unofficial, and the former name (and variants) remain far more popular (as measured e.g. by literature searches). My understanding of WP:NAME is that, in such cases, our longstanding policy is to use the most common unambiguous name, but a couple of users (including Brews) feel we should promote the term preferred by standards organizations. However, this is merely a matter of convention and terminology, so in my opinion it is not very important compared to the above question, which is a question of fact (of the mathematical implications of the unit/constant definitions). I mention it here only so that you don't confuse one dispute for the other. —Steven G. Johnson (talk) 14:42, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
 * These worries are overblown. I am not trying to insert original research. I had hoped to clarify the way vacuum was used in these articles, and even exchanged e-mail with Barry Taylor (coauthor of the CODATA report on fundamental constants) at NIST on the subject. I quote his e-mail:


 * Dear John,


 * You raise an interesting question that I must confess I have not thought about previously, nor do I recall ever reading a discussion about it. Off the top of my head, I would say that Maxwell's equations in their SI form in vacuum apply to a "hypothetical" or "conceptual" vacuum where c = 299792458 m/s exactly, mu_0 = 4pi x 10^-7 N/A^2 exactly, and c = sqrt(1/[mu_0 x epsilon_0]) exactly.  If one could achieve such a vacuum in practice, then one would presumably find, if one could actually do such an experiment, that the relative static electric permittivity of vacuum was exactly 1 (and similarly for the relative static magnetic permeability) of vacuum.  On the other hand, we know that the modern picture of the vacuum is that it is a frothing sea of virtual particles coming into and going out of existence in times consistent with the uncertainty principle.  Thus, in this sense, the "hypothetical" or "conceptual" vacuum can be viewed as not really a vacuum at all.  With this view in mind, see my two brief comments in red below, but I would perhaps say that the key measurement one should make to determine if a given "vacuum" is really our "hypothetical" or "conceptual" vacuum is that of the speed of light.


 * With best wishes,


 * Barry


 * My view is that Steve has gone overboard on this one, and is forcing his personal agenda on the articles. In any case, I have no intention of pursuing this matter except on talk pages. Wikipedia is welcome to be illogical (one step worse than inaccurate). My latest edits on these pages are innocuous. Brews ohare (talk) 17:02, 19 February 2008 (UTC)


 * An unpublished personal letter is not a reputable source for Wikipedia, sorry. And as he says, he's writing "off the top of his head."  I provided a Rev. Mod. Phys. reference that includes quantum electrodynamics effects and still states that the linear relative permittivity of vacuum is (exactly) unity. —Steven G. Johnson (talk) 17:31, 19 February 2008 (UTC)


 * No idea on my part that unpublished source is suitable for Wikipedia. Does show though that a well-established expert doesn't find the idea of "vacuum" quite as Steven does.
 * In addition, reduction of the argument to whether "vacuum" has relative permittivity 1 is a complete misstatement of the issue, as I agree with this statement 100%. Brews ohare (talk) 17:45, 19 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Brews, you "agree" with that statement by redefining "vacuum" (circularly), as I pointed out. And the question is not my opinion or your opinion or an unpublished opinion "off the top of his head" by a guy at NIST, but published, refereed work.  And all of the published, considered analyses that I can find contradict what you are saying, nor have you been able to find any that agree with you.  The problem here that you think we should base the article on your arguments rather than on published references, and you seem willing to suck up endless amounts of time in a pointless debate about unpublished speculation.


 * In any case, please don't continue your arguments here; that's not what this page is for. Continue ad nauseam on Talk:Vacuum permittivity (if you must waste our time, do it in one place).  —Steven G. Johnson (talk) 17:53, 19 February 2008 (UTC)


 * —Steven G. Johnson (talk) 17:53, 19 February 2008 (UTC)


 * I'm with Steven here. There certainly has been speculation in the (astro-)physics community that the speed of light may be variable, the fine structure constant as well (there's even some ambiguous astrophysical evidence for this). It is definitely known that the vacuum is polarizable (see Casimir effect). However, all that is quite far from the beaten track of canonical concepts for permittivity as presented in e.g. JD Jackson. It might be acceptable to have a see-also link to some article that talks about the non-constancy of constants, but the core article should  probably not be expanded to discuss these more opaque and treacherous, and as yet, scientifically unestablished, ideas. linas (talk) 18:47, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Dispute at Lorentz Force
Could anyone with knowledge of classical electromagnetism please comment at the discussion page of Lorentz Force? I'm embroiled in an endless dispute with another (anonymous) editor about such issues as whether Faraday's Law is a consequence of the Lorentz Force. I believe that the other editor has some very basic misunderstandings about electromagnetism, and he or she believes the same about me. A second, third, fourth opinion would be much appreciated. I wrote a summary at the bottom in case you don't want to read through the endless back-and-forth. --Steve (talk) 18:24, 3 March 2008 (UTC)


 * The editor appears to be a sincere but confused "Maxwell fundamentalist". For those who don't know, Maxwell's definition of E is different from the modern one (namely, E is synonymous with force over charge, so that it's not quite a vector field, but a function of position and velocity), and Maxwell's original equations were different from the ones currently known as Maxwell's equations (modified by Heaviside, I guess). This editor is trying to make articles consistent with all Maxwell's original definitions and terminologies, and in the process inconsistent with modern usage. The activity is primarily at Lorentz force, but a little bit elsewhere too (see his/her edits). So far I think I've been keeping up okay (with the help of User:BenRG at Lorentz force), but if the reversions and edits continue, more help (perhaps from administrators?) may become necessary. FYI, --Steve (talk) 23:49, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Question of Wikipedia policy
What's the Wikipedia policy when a standards-body advocates one notation or terminology, but the majority (or perhaps the overwhelming majority) of practitioners favor a different one? This has happened in speed of light, where ISO 31 favors c0, but c is much more common. (The article was changed in recent days from c to c0.) Another example is gyromagnetic ratio, where most people use the term "gyromagnetic", but a chemistry standards-body advocated for "magnetogyric". (The article is now "gyromagnetic", but has been switched back and forth a couple times, without ever having had much good debate or consensus.)

Everyone would agree that when the term is first introduced, the different terminologies/notations should be listed out and explained. But the question still remains: In the rest of the article, and the title of the article, and other related articles, one or the other convention has to be chosen. Based on Wikipedia guidelines, what's the appropriate policy? Thanks! --Steve (talk) 00:33, 1 March 2008 (UTC)


 * It may be that WP:NPOV covers this case to some extent. It is an official English Wikipedia policy, which reads in part:"Where multiple or conflicting perspectives exist within a topic each should be presented fairly. None of the views should be given undue weight or asserted as being judged as 'the truth', in order that the various significant published viewpoints are made accessible to the reader, not just the most popular one."


 * Does that make sense in this case? (sdsds - talk) 00:41, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

That would make sense in the context of a special section about notational conventions, which I agree should be present in any such case. But in the rest of the article, and in the title of the article, and in related articles that mention the term, you really have to choose one or the other. For example, in the Speed of light article, scroll down to the Einstein velocity addition formula. Should it be written in terms of c or c0? What about Lorentz force, which has a number of formulas involving the speed of light--What notation should be used? In Larmor precession, should the term "gyromagnetic ratio" or "magnetogyric ratio" be used? In all these examples, it's inappropriate and impractical to list out the different conventions / notations, given the unrelated context. --Steve (talk) 01:15, 1 March 2008 (UTC)


 * In this case we are talking about notation, not a definition, and in fact a subscript. Current practice is to use c0 to denote the speed of light in vacuum according to ISO 31. In the original Recommendation of 1983, the symbol c was used for this purpose. See NIST Special Publication 330, Appendix 2, p. 45. The BIPM uses c0 in official documents as well. So its clear how the water is running here.
 * This is not a question of "truth" or "interpretation", just a convention. Of course, the reasons behind the notation are irrelevant to Wikipedia, but they probably stem from a desire to make c0 match the universal usage of ε0 and μ0 and Z0, all of which refer to free space. It also has the effect of freeing up the symbol c for celerity to represent the velocity of light in a medium - that usage also occurs in some EM articles already (not my work).
 * I've already changed c to c0 in most of its occurrences. It all seems a bit dumb to reverse this: where is the constituency that opposes ISO 31-5?

Brews ohare (talk) 16:34, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

The symbol "c" for the speed of light in vacuum is extremely recognizable to not just physicists but the general public as well (E=mc^2, anyone?) that I would be rather reluctant to change it to "c_0" everywhere. On top of that, every class I every took, paper or book I ever read and in my work as a physicist, I can't ever remember coming across an instance of the symbol "c_0". So I would vote to not use this symbol as the standard. It may be common in certain subfields but there is not question that "c" is the general standard. Joshua Davis (talk) 17:40, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
 * What is your view of the adoption by ISO 31-5 and NIST and BIPM of c0?  It is the charter of these bodies to help the technical community by setting up standards that make sense and avoid babel; believe me, every debate you can think of went on before this change was made.
 * It is not surprising that you have not run into c0 in your work, because the standard is new. However, adoption of the new standard could prove beneficial. The standards bodies believe so.
 * From Wikipedia's perspective, no article is accessed using c or c0; it's simply notation, and defined in context. Usually notation is the author's prerogative, ISO simply tries to set up some uniformity.Brews ohare (talk) 18:00, 1 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Like Joshua Davis, I've read an awful lot of physics papers and textbooks and I'm pretty sure I've never seen a single usage of c0. I don't think Wikipedia should be boldly on the forefront of a new drive for ISO 31-5 compliance. It should be using the notation used by (to a first approximation) 100% of professional physicists. Wikipedia doesn't follow international standards as a rule. We ignore ISO 3602, for example, not by accident but as a deliberate and carefully considered policy. -- BenRG (talk) 18:58, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
 * ISO 3602 is not a parallel example in two ways: first, ISO 3602 redirects to Kunrei-shiki romanization, which is the name of an article; c does not: the closest example of an article is speed of light, which in the article itself carefully introduces both c and c0. Second, Kunrei-shiki romanization is an actual understandable word-description while ISO 3602 is a meaningless code. So, in short, the example is not relevant. What is relevant is that authors normally choose notation to suit themselves, and use of c0 simply introduces a modicum of order, order with international sanction. Already in Wikipedia c is used to mean speed of light in a medium, not in free space: that variety could be standardized. What also is relevant is that readers of the international pertinent documents at NIST or BIPM will find c0 everywhere. Here is an example from BIPM Brews ohare (talk) 22:34, 1 March 2008 (UTC)


 * My point about ISO 3602, aka kunrei-shiki, is that Wikipedia doesn't use it for romanizing Japanese even though it's the ISO standard for romanizing Japanese. We seem to have very different views of international standards. ISO standards are community standards. They're written by interested volunteers from the community. They have no binding force even within the community. People follow them to the extent that they benefit from doing so. Sometimes the standards process goes awry and the standard doesn't reflect the community's interests, in which case it gets ignored. I suspect physicists will ignore this new notation, but maybe they'll decide it's a good idea and adopt it. That hasn't happened yet. It makes no sense to try to use Wikipedia to push the new notation. Let the physicists decide. It's their choice, not the ISO's. -- BenRG (talk) 22:49, 1 March 2008 (UTC)


 * I consider myself overruled, but unconvinced. Unlike the law, where one gets pigeon-holed into a narrow box of irrelevant detail, in Wikipedia one is drowned in a sea of generality that ignores specifics. Brews ohare (talk) 00:04, 2 March 2008 (UTC)


 * I don't want to pile on, but if you want convincing, maybe these arguments will be attractive to you:
 * Wikipedia guidelines and practices should be shaped by a desire to benefit the reader. I would argue that c0 does not benefit the reader, since it is very unlikely to appear in other sources the reader may be using, from journal articles to elementary textbooks. By this mechanism, using a notation different from the de facto standard causes confusion and possibly even misunderstanding.
 * As a secondary issue to readability, we should make maintaining articles easy. If an article contains the c0 notation, it is likely that a future editor will change it, not having seen the notation before. Editors who wish to keep c0 in place would find it very difficult to enforce it. So now the original effort is wasted, and the distribution of notations across articles degenerates into a random mixture. This doesn't even take into account the fact that new articles with c are created all the time under the radar, and the difficulty of hitting all the articles in the first editing pass.
 * Taking the long view, it is possible that the ISO standard will change or even become challenged by a rival standard. We do not want to have to re-edit all the articles every time this happens, especially if it has no bearing on actual usage.
 * Does that sound good? Melchoir (talk) 01:51, 2 March 2008 (UTC)


 * I however would like to pile on. As BenRG stated c is c to (first order) all physicists, and that's how it should be represented on Wikipedia. --Falcorian (talk) 02:40, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

I have removed the c_0 from Speed of Light per this discussion. --Falcorian (talk) 00:30, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
 * It is interesting to report that the German language Wiki has not followed the pattern of this Wikipedia, and uses the notation c0 extensively. Apparently, the "reasoning" of the American community is (unusually?) at variance with the rest of the world, or at least a part of same. Vive la Différence!, eh? Brews ohare (talk) 18:52, 9 March 2008 (UTC)


 * "c" means "speed of light" (or even occasionally "speed of sound") while "c0" means "speed of light in a vacuum". In most contexts, the former is equivalent to the latter. JRSpriggs (talk) 07:14, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
 * I'm left unsure what conclusion you draw from this. I'd conclude that c0 should be used in vacuum. Brews ohare (talk) 14:18, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Even references in solid state physics and optics mean 2.9... by "c". Melchoir (talk) 16:49, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

Proposed WikiProject Microscopy
This may be of interest to some members of this project – I've recently proposed the creation of a WikiProject on Microscopy. If interested, add your name here: WikiProject_Council/Proposals. Peter G Werner (talk) 18:46, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Sub-Planck
I have nominated this article for deletion. Please join the discussion. Jehochman Talk 12:17, 4 March 2008 (UTC)
 * The discussion is already over, too quickly for me to get involved, unfortunately. But in case anyone wants to read the discussion, I provide a link to the AfD. JFlav (talk) 03:22, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

Newly discovered room temperature superconductor?
Could someone check this article out? I am not strong enough in physics or chemistry to write articles about those subjects, but a room temperature superconductor under high pressure probably is exciting news for you people. By the way, an article on silane exists already. The new superconductor seems to be based on it. Jesse Viviano (talk) 15:10, 20 March 2008 (UTC)


 * For what it's worth, they didn't actually measure that it was superconducting at room temperature (see the correction to the article you posted). Here is the original article. I'd say it's well worth putting in a mention in the silane article, as appears to have already been done. :-) --Steve (talk) 03:43, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Symbol for Charge
Is the symbol for charge q (lower case) as in Lorentz force and Maxwell's equations or is it Q (upper case) as in electric charge and mass-to-charge ratio? Thanks. --Kkmurray (talk) 16:07, 20 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Either.  Although for some reason I have a preference for q for point charges.  &mdash; Laura Scudder &#9742; 19:41, 20 March 2008 (UTC)


 * I think q may be more common but Q is often used. It is also common to use e for the elementary unit of charge, i.e. an electron carries charge -e. Joshua Davis (talk) 04:37, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Applications of groups in physics
The group (mathematics) article is a current collaboration of the month in the WP Math. If some of you have time, can you please post a couple of interesting applications of this notion in physics? (Please reply either by collaborating directly or at the talk page). Thanks, Jakob.scholbach (talk) 17:35, 21 March 2008 (UTC)


 * The Poincaré group is the basis of special relativity. Spinors and tensors, group representations of the Lie algebra of the special orthogonal group SO(3,R) of spatial rotations, are used to describe elementary particles. JRSpriggs (talk) 04:31, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

While we are at it, perhaps somebody would like to improve the supergroup (physics) article. Currently it claims that supergroups generalise groups, but that is far from obvious and is not explained. --Hans Adler (talk) 08:57, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

Physics: Articles of unclear notability
Hello,

there are currently 16 articles in the scope of this project which are tagged with notability concerns. I have listed them here. (Note: this listing is based on a database snapshot of 2008-03-12 and may be slightly outdated.)

I would encourage members of this project to have a look at these articles, and see whether independent sources can be added, whether the articles can be merged into an article of larger scope, or possibly be deleted. Any help in cleaning up this backlog is appreciated. For further information, see WikiProject Notability.

If you have any questions, please leave a message on the Notability project page or on my personal talk page. (I'm not watching this page however.) Thanks! --B. Wolterding (talk) 16:24, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

Myrzakulov equations up for deletion
FYI, Myrzakulov equations (2nd nomination) to delete this article. Benji boi 22:18, 20 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Hello, mysterious disappearing person who occasionally re-appears! Though Wikipedia is an unkind place, we are still where the action is. If you ever decide to follow up your previous comments at Erlangen Program it would be good to know your views. Content is whatever survives; persuasive contributors usually win. From the Talk page comment that you linked to above, it sounds like you still possess the necessary skills to contribute at AfD, and be respected there. Please unveil your mystery by continuing to show up at AfD. EdJohnston (talk) 20:22, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

Chris, wikipedia does not work like an academic journal. A crank can write something cranky, and then others can decide to delete it or improve it. This approach can lead to good results. The wikipedia you want would lead to something like this but then on a much larger scale perhaps?.

I don't see how you can change wikipedia using "constitutional reforms". You should try to implement regime change using force instead :). The first step would be to declare independence for the physics sector of wikipedia and try to get a large number of editors on your side. If this is "de facto" accepted by the wider wikipedia community, then you've succeeded and we can just write our own constitution for physics. Count Iblis (talk) 02:07, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

Templates for displaying particles, nuclei and atoms
I've started creating templates to facilitate creating symbols for particles, nuclei, atoms, etc... this makes it easy to create such symbols and gives all pages the same look and feel. It's a work in progress, but it's gotten to the part where it is flexible enough to be used for just about everything. I would like to suggest replacing all instances of symbols for particles, nuclei, atoms, etc... using these templates - I've started with a few pages already, but there's no way I can do this by hand all by myself. See Category:Nuclide templates and my User:SkyLined page for an overview of what I've done so far. Feel free to comment now - it's better to raise a concern before we implement it everywhere than to have to revert it. —Preceding comment was added at 14:48, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

I also need help finding references for the correct symbols for elements, isotopes, nuclei, atoms, subatomic particles, etc. And of course for the number of protons for each element and the most common/stable isotope. See the various templates to determine which need references (mainly the SymbolFor..., ProtonsFor..., etc... subtemplates) SkyLined (talk) 11:19, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

String Hypothesis POV
User AngryBacon has decided that String Theory should be called "String Hypothesis" (as well as adding a psuedo science tag to the string theory page), creating a page String Hypothesis. The string theory page has plenty of discussion of its limitations as a scientific theory, and doing this is just POV and vandalism. How can we delete String Hypothesis and String hypothesis? PhysPhD (talk) 18:10, 19 March 2008 (UTC)
 * As they were redirects, take them to WP:RFD. --Malcolmxl5 (talk) 20:31, 19 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Although AngryBacon is wrong, the existence of the redirect seems harmless to me.linas (talk) 03:50, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

Reference Desk question
A question has been asked on the Science Reference Desk, here, about what happens when you hit a spinning ball. I was hoping somebody here would weigh in with a bit of mathematics. --Milkbreath (talk) 16:52, 31 March 2008 (UTC)