Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Chemistry/Archive 13

message: Here's a good article I stumbled upon today, that might help us decide how we should gauge tag use for science articles and also reader direction.  Later: --Sadi Carnot 02:42, 5 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The survey is interesting, but of course not all Wikipedia users are adults. ;-) I'm also a bit surprised that 100% of the respondents had a high school diploma or higher. --Itub 06:24, 5 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: 50% of Wikipedia American adult readers have college degrees

message: Talk:Aldol condensation#Overly technical - concern about accessibility to non-chemist readers FrozenPurpleCube 05:51, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  RFC for [[Aldol condensation]] 

message: I just found this Glossary of coined terms in chemistry.  It's pretty interesting and has all the references to the original papers.  I skimmed through the first 25 pages and have already found four errors, namely: "free energy" was coined by Hermann von Helmholtz in 1882, the "entropy of the universe tends to a maximum" was coined by Rudolf Clausius in 1865, "molecule" was coined by René Descartes in about 1625, and I'm pretty sure that the specific term "information theory" wasn't used until the 1950s.  So use with caution. --Sadi Carnot 04:39, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Interesting 56 page "who coined what in chemistry" reference

message: The chemistry COTM has rather languished since ~K went on extended wikibreak.  I decided to be bold and update it, and it's now :Category:Chemistry articles with topics of unclear importance.  Please pick an unimportant compound and find a reason for its existence!
Current nominations are
* Registration, Evaluation and Authorisation of Chemicals  (REACH) 
* Catalysis
* Liquid
* Cohesion
* hydroxide/hydroxy/hydroxyl
Please help out, and vote for future COTMs.  I'll try to put us back on a monthly changeover. Thanks, Walkerma 06:32, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I've taken each of the organic compounds on the list and expanded them at least a little bit, except for dichlorobutane, which I sent to proposed deletion - feel free to remove if anyone thinks they can deal with it.  I'll leave the inorganic compounds on the list (the much bigger job) to someone else.  :)   --Ed (Edgar181) 19:32, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Chemistry COTM 

message: (cross-posted request from WikiProject Elements) - There's efforts to migrate the element infoboxes into their own sub-templates, so if you're watching the elements, please consider putting the infobox templates on your watchlist as well. (See Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Elements#Watchlist requests for a convenient list of &action=watch links.) Thanks! Femto 12:09, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  118 watchlist requests 

message: I just wanted to inform people here if they are interested that the analytical chemistry article has had some major revisions and I am asking for input on the talk page.--Nick Y. 21:32, 7 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Sure; when i'm free, i will be sure to add some images on there.   ♥♥ ΜÏΠЄSΓRΘΠ€ ♥♥ slurp me! 21:40, 7 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I might hold off on that until the article is in a better state. For the most part I actually do not agree with the major changes and would tend to revert but want some input from others as to not discourage editors contributing to the article only to be reverted without any discussion about how to include input in a constructive way. I look forward to some images in the future!--Nick Y. 22:28, 7 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Analytical chemistry 

message: Looks like something that should be easy to do for somebody familiar with this area. Sancho 23:06, 7 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Carbamate]] needs references 

message: Does anyone here know anything about electrovalency? The article is nearly an orphan, and from what I read there electrovalency is basically a synonym of ionic charge. It seems to me that it is an old term that's not used much by chemists anymore. What should be done with the article? --Itub 11:16, 9 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I've PRODded it. The term is obsolete to Valence, which isn't looking too healthy itself as a term.... Physchim62 (talk) 11:40, 9 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Electrovalency 

message: --Belg4mit 11:51, 9 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Science#Chemistry_cleanup|Acid-base cleanup]] 

message: This article is on one of our most basic topics, and a dispute has arisen recently regarding the definition.  I greatly expanded the article a while ago (it had been little more than a disambig page) and I consulted a few textbooks to get definitions.  Several others, such as User:Beetstra and User:Centrx then did an extensive rewrite, and we achieved consensus.  Now User:Hallenrm has argued that the textbook definitions are outdated, and that a chemical substance is best defined as any material object that can undergo transformations responsible for a phenomenon such as a fire or an explosion.  Both Centrx and myself considered this wrong, as it implies that a mixture can be defined as a single substance, and we reverted, but Hallenrm believes this unreasonable.  Please comment here.  Thanks! Walkerma 07:57, 11 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Chemical substance 

message: SMILES entries in infoboxes are no doubt legitimate and useful, but their normative conventional display as an unbroken (and typically very long) sequence of characters often causes formatting problems in these respective infoboxes. This at the very least causes their respective pages to appear unprofessional, and more importantly it interferes with their ease of reading and use. Please consider adopting some convention (such as the use of break tags and perhaps even explicit indicators ie. ~) to resolve the issue. Regards -Stevertigo 21:44, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: This is an issue that has come up a number of times, but hasn't been fully resolved.  Some browsers wrap the text of SMILES without affecting the width of the infobox, while other browsers make the box as wide as the SMILES string (which can obviously be messy).  I try to remember to add line breaks to long SMILES structures, and I know that others do also, but it certainly isn't uniform.  Does anyone know if there is a way to force the infobox into a certain width, or to force a browser to wrap text?  I agree with Stevetigo that we should try to resolve the issue one way or another.  --Ed (Edgar181) 11:36, 18 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm not sure that SMILES entries are either legitimate or useful. Who is going to check on Wikipedia to make sure that they have the correct SMILES code? InChI seems to be replacing SMILES for data entry, and this poses a new set of problems for this WikiProject. My PoV is to remove all SMILES lines from Chemboxes. Incedentally, the formatting problem can be easily fixed, but I dont think this addresses the encyclopedic question. Physchim62 (talk) 11:45, 18 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I can't say that I've ever used a SMILES string from Wikipedia, but if someone wanted to generate a chemical structure from data in the chembox, copying and pasting the SMILES (or InChI) would be easy rather than manually redrawing based on the image.  As for which might be more useful, SMILES vs. InChI, as far as I can tell SMILES gets used more often - structure editors (ChemDraw,etc.), online  resources (eMolecules.com, PUBCHEM, etc.) seem to favor SMILES.  But this is not an area that I have much of experience with, so maybe InChI is replacing it, as you say.  --Ed (Edgar181) 12:03, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

text: The reason for the addition of the SMILES codes was that they allow to paste structures directly into your molecule editor without having to redraw the molecule (no redraw - no mistakes...). This is a big plus, especially for large or complex molecules. While it not always results in the most aesthetic images, it does allow you to check or calculate molecular properties - including the data given in that article. We could add a small script to the site javascript that automatically breaks these lines by insertion of  tags without introducing linebreaks, thereby preserving the pastability. Cacycle 02:30, 1 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I have a suggestion. How about something like , as it appears in White House. So, the smiles should appear on the top above everything else, it can be clickable to search emolecules or something, and it can be pastable. All without screwing up the chembox? --Rifleman 82 06:22, 1 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm not sure we want these things across the top, and if we put SMILES there we still need to resolve the issue for InChI (which can get very long).  I think we need something that keeps the SMILES (and InChI) available for a bot or search engine to read, but which is kept hidden from the reader unless they click on something.  In reply to Ed, from this recent blog you can clearly see that people do this sort of copy/paste a fair bit (SMILES was the most popular form of search entry).  Also see this related thread.  I apologise profusely for the duplication of threads, I must've missed the post here. Walkerma 06:55, 1 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I think we're going to need a toolserver account to run this properly: however, I have a beta-test version of  up and running. Physchim62 (talk) 08:08, 1 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks, PC for working on this!  I've added that into the anthrone page where we had a broken InChI, we'll see if Google can find the info.  I'm not convinced we need to go to an external site, though - I'd rather it just showed the info on Wikipedia.  I think we just need something like User:Walkerma/Sandbox3, which I've shown sort-of-working in User:Walkerma/Sandbox4.  Unfortunately my technical lack-of-skill means that it looks ugly, and (unlike on the WP:V0.5 page) the shown version is the default instead of the hidden version.  Hopefully you get the idea - can Cacyle or PC or Dirk perhaps get this to work properly? Thanks, Walkerma 06:57, 3 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Conceptually, I like Martin's show/hide InChi box better than a link to an external site.  It would be great if something like this could be prettied up and used for both InChi and SMILES, and incorporated into   (though I feel a bit guilty saying that knowing that I'm asking someone else to do the work, because I would have no clue how to do it myself).    --Ed (Edgar181) 13:41, 3 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: My pal from WP:1.0, User:Titoxd, just fixed up my sandbox pages, see User:Walkerma/Sandbox4 to see how it works (the "InChI= above needs removing from the Chembox if we adopt this).  We could perhaps have one hide/show box for SMILES and InChI, though transclusion might be tricky for that unless we had one combined SMILES/InChI parameter in Chembox. Do people like this option? Walkerma 04:49, 5 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[SMILES]] entries 

message: As requested above, I have set up a workgroup as a pilot project to try to improve referenceing of WP articles to the IUPAC Gold Book. The worklist contains 347 articles, that is 5% of the entries in the Gold Book, chosen at random (for statistical and copyright reasons). Feel free to help out! Physchim62 (talk) 07:59, 18 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I am also working on some links/worklists from the Green Book... Physchim62 (talk) 18:11, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Wikipedia:WikiProject Chemistry/Gold Book workgroup|Gold Book workgroup]] 

message: I have opened a debate on the use of examples in Wikipedia articles (mainly focusing on computer source code and mathematical formulas, proofs, etc.). It seems to me that many examples currently in Wikipedia violate Wikipedia policy, so I believe we need to either clarify or change the situation. Depending on the result of the discussion, this may result in a number of examples being summarily removed from articles!
Please reply there, not here, if you wish to contribute.—greenrd 11:15, 18 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  POLICY DEBATE: Use of source code, mathematical examples and other examples in articles 

message: There has been some debate going on at Talk:Chemical equilibrium regarding a major re-write of the article. Few people have been involved and there are some major disagreements about the procedure... Perhaps some outside opinions could help. --Itub 11:38, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Chemical equilibrium 

message: Hello all, there is a discussion on the talkpage of Salt (Talk:Salt) about moving things around with Sodium chloride, edible salt and salt.  I am not sure how to answer to it.  I'll have a look later, but maybe there should be more people looking at this.  --Dirk Beetstra T C 13:19, 22 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  move/merge-discussion about [[Salt]] 

message: Paste from Talk:Heat and affinity
Hi, I was thinking that some discussion of the alchemical principles (salt, sulphur, mercury) would be useful to add to the history section of chemical element, or perhaps to history of the molecule. However, I'm not that familiar with this topic, and since the ancient history of chemistry seems to be one of your favorite topics I thought you might know more about it. Cheers, Itub 08:01, 24 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, I already have most of this typed up in a sub-section called "Heat and affinity" of a chapter called "Affinity and Free Energy" (chapter 11, pgs. 329-368) of a new 2007 textbook on humanchemistry.net publishing soon.  I'll just give you the 7-page subsection here: Heat and affinity with the 25-references included and I'll leave it to you to format.  Later: --Sadi Carnot 11:02, 24 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks, I have started doing some formatting. --Itub 13:06, 24 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Take your time, maybe some Wikipedia:WikiProject Chemistry people can chip in?  I'll post a note there. --Sadi Carnot 13:30, 24 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Chemical principles and [[Heat and affinity]] 

message: The article unsolved problems in biology has been nominated for deletion. Your opinion is welcomed at the discussion under Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Unsolved problems in biology (2nd nomination). You might also have a look at the similar page unsolved problems in chemistry. Cacycle 00:43, 30 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I'd kill them both off, since to me they appear unencyclopedic.  IMHO, such lists represent "scrapbooks", are highly subjective, and are magnets for using WE for original research.  Then again, WE has no shortage of disk space and such lists can be stimulating to compile.  If they are retained, it might be a good idea to rename these articles "great unsolved problems in ..."--Smokefoot 01:10, 30 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Kill them off and salt the earth. I have nominated unsolved problems in chemistry for deleteion here. Physchim62 (talk) 09:37, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

text:  Cacycle 20:55, 30 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Unsolved problems in biology nominated for deletion 

message: Relative density has been nominated for a scientific peer review: on a quick look, it could do with some cleanup but is factually correct. Physchim62 (talk) 09:48, 30 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Scientific peer review request 

message: I've made a suggestion at Template talk:Cite journal regarding making citing organic syntheses easy. Perhaps you can drop by if you have an interest in the matter? --Rifleman 82 02:19, 31 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: is now up and running. If have collected together all the chemistry citation templates I know about and placed them in :Category:Chemistry citation templates Physchim62 (talk) 11:22, 31 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  {{tl|cite journal}} and [[Organic Syntheses]] 

message: There are some conflict of interest issues at this page. Interested parties can take a look at Talk:Organocatalysis. --Rifleman 82 02:51, 31 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: To the person's credit, he has used their full name as a username, so at least he is not trying to be sneaky about this.  But I think he has gone overboard on citing himself and his adviser. And the "advantages of" section is also a bit naughty.  Walkerma 03:21, 31 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Organocatalysis]] and [[WP:COI]] 

message: Is there any chance we can turn it into a single template, and just have optional parameters? It's really ghastly having to look at all that in the edit. ♥♥ ΜÏΠЄSΓRΘΠ€ ♥♥ slurp me! 12:04, 31 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: It's doable, but I would need help. Physchim62 (talk) 16:36, 31 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: User:MZMcBride already converted some articles to the new Template:Elementbox, see /Template:Infobox carbon for example. Documentation and coordination at Wikipedia:WikiProject Elements is lacking though. Femto 18:56, 3 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Elementbox is horrendous 

message: Has anyone heard of, or used, a service called Chemspider?  An article was recently created on it, and its deletion is being discussed at Wikipedia:Wikiquette_alerts#possible_COI_at_Chemspider.  If you have an opinion on whether this article should be saved, please leave a comment there. EdJohnston 15:32, 3 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Update: The article was nominated for deletion, but the result was "Keep".  ChemSpider is also reviewed in the Digital Briefs section of this week's Chemical and Engineering News. Walkerma 04:54, 12 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Should we have some notability guidelines for chemical databases to stop this problem from reoccurring? Physchim62 (talk) 16:30, 12 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Chemspider]] is notable? 

message: Please try and help improve this important but neglected article!  Also, please nominate/vote for future COTMs here. Thanks, Walkerma 04:36, 4 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Liquid]] is the Collaboration of the Month for June 

message: I was glancing at a couple of things for the Gold Book workgroup, and found:
*Mass spectrometry is a very nice article.  It's not within my main area of expertise, but I think I'd like to nominate it for A-Class. We don't have a formal place for doing A-Class reviews at WP:Chemistry like we have at WP:Chemicals.   Could others take a look and see if they agree it should be A? A-Class means more or less complete, it would just need a bit of cleanup to go to WP:FAC.  
*Meanwhile, we don't have an article on molecular ion, which surprises me since much of the little I know about MS is centred around this concept - how it's the highest expected mass in a mass spectrum, and how it breaks apart to give the other ions, how the different MS techniques can affect the amount of it present, that sort of thing.  I think there's enough for a whole article - is there anyone here capable of writing such an article?  Thanks, Walkerma 16:51, 8 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Mass spectrometry topics 

message: Started monumental paper, please feel free to chip in.  Thanks: --Sadi Carnot 15:28, 10 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: [[On the Equilibrium of Heterogeneous Substances]]

message: A new user turned the energy article into a disambig page; we are trying to fix the problem presently.  Please cast your vote at straw-poll overview, on the proposed solution.  Thanks: --Sadi Carnot 22:30, 12 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Cast your vote at the [[energy]] article straw poll

message: This article has been submitted for scientific peer review. It is very short and pretty bad. It is part of the Physics Project and the Molecular and Cell Biology Project, but not the Chemistry Project. Is it worth working on or should it just be made a redirect somewhere else. --Bduke 00:35, 16 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I've seen this term and "cohesive forces" used in non-chemistry contexts. It is usually explained due to "chemistry" without further explanation. I'm not sure that it should really be labeled as chemistry. It is more of a physics concept which of course is rooted in Van der Waals forces, dipole-dipole interactions etc. It is somewhat like coefficients of friction and heat capacities. They are macroscopic properties of materials that are intimately connected to the underlying chemistry. Perhaps we could contribute short summaries and links to the appropriate chemistry articles, but we should not adopt it. I think the article needs to exist since I can not think of an appropriate redirect. Certainly it should not be to any chemistry articles. It is probably visited frequently by 8th graders learning about the meniscus in a graduated cylinder. It is a broad term used in basic science.--Nick Y. 17:31, 18 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: [[Cohesion (chemistry)]]

message: Alchemy has been nominated for a featured article review. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to featured quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, articles are moved onto the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article from featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Reviewers' concerns are here. (Yes, I know Alchemy isn't Chemistry but one of the sections touches on modern stuff.) DrKiernan 13:07, 19 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  FAR 

message: Just so everyone knows, it seems that a graduate class at UCSD is improving some natural product pages for a class assignment.  Since new editors often find Wikipedia frustrating at first, I've invited them to drop by here if they have questions or need help.  The article list they are working on is this:  Tyrocidine-Bleomycin-Cyclosporin-Doxorubicin-Lovastatin-Lincomycin-Mitomycin C-Ansamycin-Mupirocin-Novobiocin-Thienamycin-Epothilone B-Salinosporamide A-Artemisinin-Vancomycin-Pladienolide
--Ed (Edgar181) 21:14, 19 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Good ED move and welcome UCSD. There are wikipedia specific issues that may come up that other users may be helpful with. Also in all likelihood part of the purpose of the assignment is about working with others in collaborations and for peer review.--Nick Y. 19:38, 20 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Class assignment 

message: Translated this new article from the de version. FYI. --Rifleman 82 03:35, 27 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: That's funny, yesterday I created Heinrich Limpricht, also based on the German version. --Itub 11:09, 27 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Thank your favorite deity for German Wikipedia, where would we be without them?! Physchim62 (talk) 12:05, 27 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Hermann Arthur Jahn]] 

message: While looking for information about Heinrich Limpricht (discussed above), I found this website: http://www.scs.uiuc.edu/~mainzv/Web_Genealogy/ . It is interesting because it tells you who was the mentor and who were the notable students of each chemist in their list. Many of the chemist articles in Wikipedia are just stubs, and I think we could enrich them considerably just by adding this very specific piece of information (even the longer articles usually don't mention all the notable students). To make the information more visible and consistent, I would suggest modifying, or creating a modified version of,  for academics, with the additional fields "mentor(s)" and "notable student(s)" (Note: I just noticed that  already does that.) --Itub 12:42, 27 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  An idea regarding biographies