Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Physics/Archive 2

message: I have made the changes discussed below.  :Template:Elementary now lists the SM particles, the Higgs boson, the graviton, and links to List of particles#Hypothetical particles.  That section of the List of particles, which I just reorganized a bit, seems to have all the SUSY particles there were before and more.  If there are other particles people want articles on, I think they should be added to the particle list page. -- SCZenz 18:48, 25 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: And excuse me for the following rudeness, but the template at the bottom of top quark epitomizes everything that I dislike about templates.  This template should be converted into a real, legit article, and not cut-n-pasted everywhere is if it were a bad nightmare of some upcoming mid-term exam. linas 20:31, 24 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Linas, you seem to misunderstand the purpose of the elementary particles template.  Ther are legitimate articles covering all of that material, both the generalities and the specifics, which are linked to by the template itself.  The template is only for the purpose of navigating around between elemntary particles, and understanding how they're interconnected, and I can tell you it works very well.  So well that I have it on my own user page to navigate to the elementary particle pages that I am working on. -- SCZenz 23:41, 24 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: As somebody who generally dislike templates, I have to say that this one seems to be a useful. My only problem is that three lines are taken up by particles that have not been observed, of which all but the Higgs boson seem to be quite speculative (disclaimer: I am not a physicist but a mathematician). Do you really need to spell out all the SUSY partners? How about collapsing the last three lines to "Not yet observed: Higgs boson - Graviton - Supersymmetric partners"? -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 10:13, 25 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I concur with that idea, but didn't do it earlier because I was afraid of stepping on someone's toes.  I think i will do it, unless I see objections. -- SCZenz 14:52, 25 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  I think that there should be one wiki page on which all the supersymmetric parters are listed. Then you can link to that page from the template. Now there are a few stubs which mention some particles, like e.g. gluino or gravitino and I don't think that these pages will ever become full articles. The page should also mention other hypothetical particles associated with supersymmetry, like the R-Axion (in case of R-symmetry breaking) particles from the hidden and messenger sectors see page 10 and further in this article, extended objects like Q-balls etc. Count Iblis 15:36, 25 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  There should really be one page with all hypothetical particles, which we link to from the template.  No reason to favor SUSY.  Does such a page exist? -- SCZenz 16:59, 25 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  I agree! Such a page doesn't exist to my knowledge. I did have plans to make a page about Q-balls and 'broken' mirror matter as opposed to  'unbroken' mirror matter. All the stubs should be deleted or redirected to a main page with all the hypothetical particles. That page could, of course, link to separate pages about hypothetical particles in case there is enough to write about those particles. Count Iblis 17:29, 25 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  I am not 100% sure we need to delete those stubs.  I'll make a first draft which just links to them for now, I think, but we can change it later. -- SCZenz 18:21, 25 July 2005 (UTC)

text: Yes, and also its supersymmetric partner the axino.Count Iblis 14:32, 28 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  At a certain point, if everyone wants to add their favorite hypothetical particle, we should split of the hypotheticals into their own list, by theory.  Perhaps I will do this when I get the chance... -- SCZenz 15:48, 28 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Particle template 

message: :Template:Composite has three entries -- exotic meson, tetraquarks and hybrids -- all of which redirect to exotic meson.  Should these be split into three articles, or should the template list non-quark model mesons, or just exotic meson ? Salsb 00:45, 26 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Template:Composite sounds like it is unnecessary and should be deleted.  There's no reason to split an article into 3 to fit the template.  -- SCZenz 04:40, 26 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  I may have not been clear :Template:Composite  had 12 entries, 3 of which were to the same article. I went ahead and removed the superfluous entries. Salsb 23:41, 26 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  Sorry, I should have looked.  My bad.  -- SCZenz 00:03, 27 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Composite particle

message: I think this list could use some cleaning, but I'm working on something else right now. Karol 08:42, July 28, 2005 (UTC)
*I'm concerned by what's written under the "Meaning" column for a number of the entries; they seem to be a method of calculating the quantity rather than a description of what the quantity is. As my high school physics teacher used to say, an equation is not the same as a definition. StuTheSheep 15:27, August 30, 2005 (UTC)
::I don't know what else to say for most of them.  Perhaps a concrete example would be useful (albeit space-inefficient) in many examples, but what is linear density aside from the mass per unit length? -- SCZenz 16:09, 30 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[List of physical quantities]] 

message: Firstly, though I have a strong interest, IANAP and I'm officially crap at math. So, I need the help of someone here (if they would be so kind). I have been reverting additions to criticality accident and others for quite some time which insist on attributing the infamous "blue flash" associated with these accidents to cherenkov radiation. This is a common mistake even on purportedly reputable internet sites concerning the issue. I think it is quite clear that the blue glow seen in air during these events does not occur because of the Cherenkov effect but instead to direct ionization and fluorescence of the air. The only resonable source of Cherenkov light from a fission event is beta particles in air (yes? I mean alphas and positrons are stopped SOOO easliy and heavy ions have NO chance of reaching relativistic velocities.....right?) and because air is so tenuous the velocity of the betas would have to be very close to the speed of light (>99.97% c) in order for Cherenkov light to occur. Here's my problem then: I do not know how to convert eV to velocity for electrons (or any particle for that matter! :) so that I can say with certainty that "only beta particles exceeding X MeV are capable of producing Cherenkov light in air and therefore since there are few (none?) beta emitting isotopes which produce betas w/ energies greater than X MeV, this is a highly unlikely cause for blue light seen in the air during a criticality event". Can someone help me? I would very much appreicate it!! Thanks. :)   --Deglr6328 09:11, 13 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: You can pobably convert eV to Joules. Then all you need is the equation for (rela.) kinetic energy: .5 γ m v^2 and solve for velocity v. m is the mass of your particle. --MarSch 17:09, 14 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Help with a calculation

message: I've put Bogdanov Affair on Wikipedia:Pages needing attention/Physics. The article got a heavy amount of editing since the Bogdanovs themselves (if this claim is correct) tried to put it "right". Currently the article is protected. Confusingly Lubos Motl recently spoke in favour of the Bogdanovs  whereas Peter Woit unsurprisingly isn't amused . --Pjacobi 17:20, August 14, 2005 (UTC)
:Lubos doesn't seem to be in favor per se, but he isn't helping any either.. I have no idea what can be done with this article.  -- SCZenz 06:50, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I think that it should be deleted. Any reasonable NPOV article would necessarily have to be very negative about them. The Bogdanovs themselves are also editing here and they clearly don't agree with such an article about them. Keeping the article will probably mean that you would have to block the Bogdanovs from editing here. The Bogdanovs may then decide start a legal case against wikipedia...Count Iblis 12:03, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Bogdanov affair 

message: A new user, Markdroberts, is contributing stuff to physics articles. Unfortunately, there is quite a lot of cleanup to do after him, as this user has no idea of how to use wiki markup properly. 
I cleaned up Finsler manifold, Lanczos tensor, Perfect fluid. and Higgs mechanism, then got tired of it. Several more are left: Rotation curve, Isolated physical system, Asymptotically flat spacetime. The articles Geodesic deviation equation and Signature change seems to have already been cleaned up by other people.
Also, physicists, could you take a look at the correctness of these articles? I found Finsler manifold to miss words from a sentence, and I can't understand what it wants to say. Thanks! Oleg Alexandrov 17:50, 14 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Help needed with cleanup 

message: If you're wondering why I've been changing silly cosmetic things on list of particles, I've been trying to pretty it up a bit in response to suggestions after User:Merovingian nominated it as a featured list.  Go to Talk:List of particles to see where to go to support it. -- SCZenz 22:24, 1 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Aw, c'mon, can we get a couple Supports for this? ;) Wikipedia:Featured_list_candidates/List_of_particles -- SCZenz 05:19, 6 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[List of particles]] nominated as featured list 

message: You may want to comment at Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Modified Newtonian dynamics/archive1. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 18:41, 5 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Modified Newtonian dynamics 

message: I probably should have just #REDIRECTED this article to Heisenberg picture, but instead, I listed it on VfD. Not sure why I bothered. I guess my brain is muddled after trying to clean up :Category:Quantum mechanics (again). linas 22:02, 5 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  VfD of [[Time evolution of quantum operators]] 

message: It seems there is a basic problem with categories in physics and chemistry.  I don't see directly how to solve this but I am awaiting your comments.
The problem is that in physics, usually, the name of a field covers its theoretical as well as experimental aspects like for example atomic physics, nuclear physics, molecular physics and so on.  But there are exceptions like quantum mechanics, quantum chemistry or quantum field theory which are purely theoretical fields.
When one tries to categorize this one can obtain that atomic physics or nuclear physics are 
subfields of quantum mechanics or maybe of quantum chemistry (for atomic physics) because theoretical atomic physics and nuclear physics are fields of quantum mechanics.  This is particulary true for scattering.  Scattering theory is a clear subfield of quantum mechanics but this is not the case for the phenomenology of scattering which can be seen as a subfield of atomic, molecular, nuclear or particle physics.  If you still follow you understand that having an unclear editorial line with respect to this leads to the claim that Scattering can be a subcategory of atomic physics and a subsubcategory of quantum mechnaics while at the same time it is a subcategory of quantum mechanics.  This of course leads to nonsense.
A possible answer to this paradox could be to split atomic physics into theoretical and experimental atomic/molecular physics.  Theoretical atomic/molecular physics would be a subcategory of quantum chemistry  and quantum chemistry a subcategory of quantum mechanics which would be in turn a subfield of theoretical physics.
Maybe the best way to proceed would be to put somewhere -- why not here? -- a tree of categories for physics and chemistry which would make the editorial line clear -- which ever we decide.--131.220.68.177 07:52, 7 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I only know by inference what the role of categories is in Wikipedia, but if I'm correct, categories need not be completely logical and exclusive trees.  Rather they are groupings of the most relevant topics to a particular article.  So I am not sure there's a problem.  -- SCZenz 08:17, 7 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: That was also my opinion till User:SeventyThree and other editors moved around changing the cats with the comment (-cat, as per Wikipedia:WikiProject Categories#Goals, 'No category or article is a direct child of one of its grandparents').  I think their reasoning is not stupid and having a clear category tree would be an advantage.  Nevertheless I think this cannot be done at random without etablishing some editorial line. --13:23, 7 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I am also not sure it's possible in all cases, at least not without great difficulty and bruised egos.  If we have people who want to do it, though, I'd contribute.  -- SCZenz 20:06, 7 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I mostly agree with SCZenz; I'm not convinced that there is a problem. I view categories more as a kind of free association based accepted groupings of subjects as actually taught, practiced in journals, used by real people, etc. Such groupings are not hierarchical trees, they are networks with loops.  Put another way: subcategories are not "academic sub-disciplines"; rather, they are frequently "related disciplines". This way, we can categorize inter-disciplinary things, which otherwise become a hard problem.  I'll also explicitly reject the theoretical/experimental divide, as it is difficult to talk about a topic in atomic physics without referring to both. Even articles on QCD are both experimental and theoretical; only string theorists are exempt.   I am somehat miffed at the edits from User:SeventyThree  which I consider to have been outright damaging; I tried to fix a few, but got exhausted after a while. Its possible that very small loops in the category structure can be eliminated, but the shotgun approach used was just wrong. linas 00:38, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

text: Not sure; his edits from around 5 sept should probably be reviewed. I saw a few in there that looked a bit off. linas 14:55, 9 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: The guideline Wikipedia:Categorization says: "A good general rule is that articles should be placed in the most specific categories they reasonably fit in. For example, Queen Elizabeth should not be listed directly under People, but Queens of England might be a good place for her. We know that all Queens of England qualify as Famous Britons and as Royalty, and all of those folks qualify as People. But sometimes there's a good reason to assign an article to two categories, one of which is a direct or indirect subcategory of another. For a well-argued case study, see John Lennon." It may help to include a comment arguing your case if you decide to put an article in a category and one of its (grand)children. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 18:42, 9 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Frankly, we can refer people here if they care to read about the general issues in physics categorization.  To document which areas of physics and chemistry :Category:Scattering (for example) is properly associated with would take a lot longer than just doing it.  To have people who know the rules of categorization, but don't know the physics, working on this is rediculous--if it wasn't obvious to someone who knew the physics, though, maybe including an argument would be appropriate.  -- SCZenz 21:32, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

text: Yep. See, for example, the discussion in topic 8 above #Chemical Physics vs. Physical Chemistry. No one disagrees with the general rule, its just that some of these things are hard to categorize. linas 00:22, 10 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Problem with categories 

message: * I listed geeforce on AfD. A copyedit of gee would be appropriate at this time, to make sure its complete.
* I was tempted to list higher dimensions for deletion, and then realized that dimension was too dry and complicated for those folks who have no idea of what "four dimensions" are.  Anyone want to either expand higher dimensions, or re-write dimension to be bouncier and easier to understand for the non-mathematical? linas 14:48, 9 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  One AfD, one almost AfD 

message: Hello,
Please notice this project. 
I hope that the List of publications in physics will be adopted by the physics project.
Thanks,APH 06:49, 13 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Wikipedia:WikiProject Science pearls| Science pearls]]

message: Hi, just dropped by to alert you all to what I think is a problem with User:CarlHewitt, who has written some long articles on his own CS "theory", actor model.  This article probably violates the "original research" policy, but the immediate problem is that Hewitt claims his theory was "inspired" by gtr and quantum theory, so he added the articles to :Category:General relativity and :Category:Quantum physics.  I regard this link as far too tenuous to warrant being added to these categories, so I left a polite note and removed the categories, but he immediately added them back.  I left a second note and removed them again, but the situation probably needs to be monitored.---CH  (talk) 22:28, 14 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: It's not a violation of the OR policy if it's really been published in a peer-reviewed journal; no original research just means that Wikipedia isn't the place to publish new work.  (e.g. If Peter Higgs logged on and edited Higgs boson, that would obviously be fine.)  Not knowing anything about CS theory, I'll leave it to others to evaluate whether it's been published in a sufficiently reputable place that it's legit.  However, putting it in physics categories is definitely incorrect, and I will help keep an eye on that. -- SCZenz 23:10, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

text: Same here, its on my watch list for the physics cats, but I'll leave it to CS experts to edit the article otherwise. Salsb 23:16, 14 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I heard of the actor model more-n a decade ago; even read papers on it; topics legit.   A skim shows that Carl Hewitt has been publishing for at least 36 years; so no surprise that the article is less of an article on the topic, than it is an arcing overview of comp sci over the decades. My only concern is that his reflective story-telling is going to clash with the ruthless editing of the younger crowd, who just might rip into this stuff; in which case we'll have a bit of wikishock. (and no, categorically, this article does not belong in the GR or QM categories). linas 00:00, 15 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  Hmm...  He's an "Emeritus professor from MIT" ... linas 00:07, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

text: From what I've seen in similar situations, he'll give up or come around to really discussing it without you needing to take it to the next level.  I'm sure it's on several more watchlists now that you've brought it up here and elsewhere, so eventually he'll realize that he needs to actually justify the categories if he wants them to stick.  — Laura Scudder | Talk 05:21, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

text: It seems like a big part of his misunderstanding is failure to see that just because people working on the actor model see a connection between it and quantum mechanics doesn't necessarily mean that it's a significant enough part of our current understanding of quantum mechanics to warrant inclusion in QM categories.  — Laura Scudder | Talk 07:01, 15 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Arghh. You mean Quantum indeterminacy in computation? I am sorely tempted to VfD that article. If I smoked a lot of pot, that might be a fun topic to daydream about, but, I'm sorry, that article is free of facts and carries little information. I don't think idle hand-waving and gee-golly-whiz statements are appropriate for wikipedia.  If he wants to write an article on hung gates and quantum mechanics, do that, and provide references to articles where someone measured this in a lab. But speculation, no. linas 04:30, 16 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Yeah, he just separated out that chunk and made a new article. If he removed the word "quantum" it wouldn't be wrong.  See also Category_talk:Relativistic_Information_Science, currently in progress. GangofOne 05:35, 16 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Help needed: Actor model

message: I just discovered :Category:Physics stubs which has a number of articles that appear to not have been categorized. If anyone feels like killing some time on WP, going through these would be a good idea. linas 04:39, 16 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Ugh, I remember that category as interminable.  — Laura Scudder | Talk 06:16, 16 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes! Whenever I have lots of time to kill I look at :Category:Physics stubs and its subcat :Category:Physicist stubs. They both need considerable work. Though if several of us keep ploding through them, then they at least will get categorized. Someone recently added :Category:Relativity stubs to organize the cat a little. Salsb 12:23, 16 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Category work 

message: I recently ran into a difficulty with categorizing the article on the Bevatron that I'm working on.  The current organization seems to be that :Category:Particle accelerators describes particle accelerators in generality (designs, concepts, etc.), while its subcategory :Category:Particle colliders contains articles on specific machines.  This works well for modern accelerators, which all do indeed have colliding beams, but the Bevatron was not a collider--it just ran protons into a fixed target.  My idea, therefore, is to create a new subcat of the accelerator category, called something like :Category:Historical particle accelerators that would have the Bevatron and other past machines (say, prior to LEP?) that I, for one, am interested in filling in over time.  Does that seem a reasonable way to do it, or are there other ideas? -- SCZenz 21:56, 20 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Not to add to the confusion, but maybe :Category:Particle colliders  should be renamed to something that would allow the Bevatron to fit?  Another possibility would be to rename :Category:Particle colliders to :Category:High Energy Physics Institutes and then rename :Category:Particle experiments into something that would allow bevatron to fit.  linas 22:56, 20 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Category:Particle experiments is the detectors, not the accelerators.  But yes, we could rename :Category:Particle colliders to something that communicates the idea of "Specific particle accelerators" (which is realy how it's been used).  The main reason not to do that is I can't think of a good name!  But also, I think there could be a nice category that had the history & development of accelerators in it, all the way back to Lawrence's original 9-incher.  -- SCZenz 02:53, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

text: Ok, here's what I did.  Since :Category:Particle colliders was trying to cover institutes and accelerators, I thought it was badly named anyway.  So I moved everything over to :Category:Particle physics facilities.  (That is general enough to include Bevatron, whose only crime was being a fixed-target accelerator rather than a collider anyway.)  This leaves :Category:Particle accelerators to be just about general accelerator info, with the specific examples in the facilities category.  -- SCZenz 17:01, 25 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Since this was entirely unclear to me until I dug up this page (yes, hi, I'm new here), and since I'm contributing in these categories to a degree, I've added a note to :Category:Particle accelerators indicating your distinction above.  I think it's far more likely to be seen there, at least, than that all future contributors will bother to join this Project.  On a related note, perhaps :Category:Particle experiments should be moved to a subcat of :Category:Particle accelerators as well?  To me it seems like that category should be parallel to :Category:Particle physics facilities, but I'd enjoy hearing the why-nots. Kgf0 22:43, 27 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  Yeah, we could do that.  At the moment it's also a subcat of experimental physics, I believe, where it should stay--but I don't mind moving the particle physics branch.  In general, it's a mess figuring out what should be a subcat of what in physics.  I mean, CDF is not a type of accelerator, but then neither is Fermilab.  However, separating "facilities" from "specific accelerators" is too complex a job to be worth it, so they just got shoved in the same place--the same is not true of the detectors, which are clearly separate. -- SCZenz 04:06, 28 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Particle accelearator categories 

message: Help is needed on this article; User:William M. Connolley, who does not consider this to be a valid subject, has reverted eight months of editing, removing details and examples.  ‣ᓛᖁ[ ᑐ] 09:03, 21 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I have tried to clearly address his objections and will continue to discuss them.  However, his reverts are unacceptable, and I will keep an eye on the page.  -- SCZenz 15:25, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

text: That being said, the introduction of the article needs work, to avoid confusing those who don't already know what it's about.  -- SCZenz 15:25, 21 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Fictitious force]] 

message: The bot User talk:Curpsbot-unicodify has started crawling the math and physics pages and converting html greek characters, such as γ, into glyphs that are hard to work with (although they render the same way).  I don't think this is a good idea for math formulas and math expressions, although I support it for the other cases (people/place names, etc.) I'd like to see some sort of majority consensus developed on this, for or against,  at User talk:Curpsbot-unicodify.  linas 15:00, 24 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Unicode in physics articles 

message: Please have a look at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/False Doppler. --Pjacobi 11:55, 25 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  False Doppler VfD and ErkDemon's articles in general