Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Elements/Archive 7

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Version 0.5, assessing/tagging element articles on talk pages

As part of Version 0.5, we are planning on including all of the (known) chemical elements on our test CD version of Wikipedia. As part of this I will be tagging all of the element talk pages, but before I do this I want to get your opinion. You need to be aware both of the growing trend towards article assessment, which has been done on around 50,000 articles (using the system started WP:Chem!). You should also know about the automated lists generated by Mathbot, including both the Chemistry and the Version 0.5 lists. There are various options:

  1. Add in {{Chemistry}} and {{V0.5}} templates to the talk pages (this would be normal practice if I didn't ask!). This will ensure the article is included in both project lists.
  2. Add in {{V0.5}} only, if this project objects to the Chemistry template. The article will not appear in the Chemistry list.
  3. Write a new unified template, which links to Version 0.5, and both the Elements and Chemistry WikiProjects. The article would be included in both project lists. You can see an example of a combined template here, though I have something rather smaller in mind.

Please let me know your preferences, before I go and tag 115-odd article talk pages! Thanks, Walkerma 21:10, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

It's about time these articles get some decent WikiProject Elements banners. If you can create a nice and simple combined template in the course of your work, that would be great. Femto 11:33, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
I'll try to put together a demo for you to look at. I meant to mention, I'd put this project at the top, the V0.5 would be tucked less prominently. Walkerma 15:36, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
Can you take a look at Talk:Samarium, and let me know what you think? This template directs to this project, it also adds the article into the chemistry bot listings and the Version 0.5 list too. Walkerma 02:33, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
The template is {{Chemical Element}}. Walkerma 02:38, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
Looks good, if you're happy with it I am too. Femto 13:27, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
I have glanced over all of the articles. I still need to go back and change some importance values for lesser elements from High to Mid (see talk at WP:Chemistry), but all known elements have been tagged and are included in Version 0.5. I wanted to mention two elements that seemed to stick out as needing attention (considering article quality/length vs importance) - bromine and osmium should receive the attention of this project next. In general (for most articles) the physics side of the articles is good but the chemistry side is weak, IMHO. Walkerma 03:53, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

Infobox Consistency

Can I suggest that the WikiProject clean up whole lot of the infoboxes? I just noticed that the pages Lead, Mercury (element) and Cadmium all have different infobox colour schemes. — JeremyTalk 06:35, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

The colour match the color of the element in the PSE on every element page!--Stone 09:39, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
See Wikipedia:WikiProject Elements#Color standard for details on the colors used for chemical series. Femto 11:37, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

Notable characteristics

I'm going to excise the word Notable from the headings because it's an inherently POV and subjective term. Notability is asserted for facts through their inclusion in wikipedia; specifying that something is worthy of note is a subjective judgment, however, and should not be part of the encyclopedia's voice. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 22:23, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

I don't much care either way so long as we are consistent. --mav 00:32, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
Ditto. I admit I like "selected" isotopes, and no preference on the "characteristics" heading. Femto 11:30, 15 September 2006 (UTC)


New GA

I don't know, but I thought you guys might be interested in knowing that one of the articles within the scope of your wikiproject, copper, is now a good article. - Blood red sandman 06:22, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

Project directory

Hello. The WikiProject Council has recently updated the Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Directory. This new directory includes a variety of categories and subcategories which will, with luck, potentially draw new members to the projects who are interested in those specific subjects. Please review the directory and make any changes to the entries for your project that you see fit. There is also a directory of portals, at User:B2T2/Portal, listing all the existing portals. Feel free to add any of them to the portals or comments section of your entries in the directory. The three columns regarding assessment, peer review, and collaboration are included in the directory for both the use of the projects themselves and for that of others. Having such departments will allow a project to more quickly and easily identify its most important articles and its articles in greatest need of improvement. If you have not already done so, please consider whether your project would benefit from having departments which deal in these matters. It is my hope that all the changes to the directory can be finished by the first of next month. Please feel free to make any changes you see fit to the entries for your project before then. If you should have any questions regarding this matter, please do not hesitate to contact me. Thank you. B2T2 23:57, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

New infobox template

After noticing how many templates it took to create an infobox for an element, I created a unified template that can handle every element's infobox. It eliminates 60+ various templates and it uses some pretty neat code to remove the need to have to input things such as color1= or color2=. After a little more testing, it will be ready to be implemented. If you have any comments or suggestions or concerns, please let me know on my talk page or on the template talk page. Thanks. --MZMcBride 00:07, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

Copied from my user talk. Femto 15:29, 29 November 2006 (UTC):
When editing an element page, you're greeted with a lot of code that's unpleasant to look at and undoubtedly confusing to newcomers. I'm proposing that the element infobox be changed to something similar to what is currently used by planets. It would drastically reduce the amount of code and make the page much more user friendly. Each element would have something similar to {{Elementbox/1}} at the top of the page. On the actual infobox, there would be a box at the bottom that would say "Edit this template," most likely below the references section. The information provided in the infobox doesn't regularly change, so accessibility isn't a real issue. Also, the individual subpages of Template:Elementbox would still refer to Template:Elementbox, allowing the elimination of the innumerable templates currently in use, and also shortening the list of templates used on a particular element page. I'm strongly, strongly in favor of this proposal. I'd greatly appreciate any feedback you have on it. Thanks. --MZMcBride 22:30, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
You can dig through the archives and will find that my opinion is that wherever possible, content should remain directly editable from the page it's on. However I admit I'm less opposed to separated infobox pages now, and if it makes a more elegant code, it would be quite fine with me - provided that the Elementboxes will show more scrupulousness about the edit button than the Planetboxes (note that several don't have one). Femto 15:29, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

Titanium

Titanium is up for a featured article review. Detailed concerns may be found here. Please leave your comments and help us address and maintain this article's featured quality. Sandy (Talk) 14:56, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Statistics

Could you provide statistics concerning your articles? --Meno25 02:13, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

You mean those bot-gathered Version 1.0 Editorial Team assessment statistics? I for one have no idea how that process works, I'm afraid. Femto 13:07, 23 November 2006 (UTC)
All of the known elements are included in the bot-based assessments, but not separately - they are included in the chemistry listing - see Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Chemistry articles by quality. Walkerma 00:41, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

Stablepedia

Beginning cross-post.

See Wikipedia talk:Version 1.0 Editorial Team#Stablepedia. If you wish to comment, please comment there. ★TWO YEARS OF MESSEDROCKER★ 03:41, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

End cross-post. Please do not comment more in this section.

Printing trouble

My kid is trying to print out Iron for a science-fair project. The printout looks terrible -- the table occupies almost all the page, leaving a six-letter-wide column on the left, into which the the first paragraph overruns (chemical, element being more than six letters, etc). The problem seems to be that the table for the vapor pressure is hogging all the space: there's a lot of white-space pad in the vapor-pressure cells, esp in the print version. Other elements aren't so bad, since they don't list that many vapor pressures.

The ideal fix would be to narrow the white-space pad. I'd do this myself, except I looked at the page markup and almost fainted; I don't know what to fix, and if I did I'd probably get reverted. The problem occurs for multiple browsers; firefox, msie (under windows), and konqueror. Help!? linas 05:40, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

Just checking that we see the same thing, you're trying to print the output from the Printable version link, yes? It's not the vapor pressure table, far as I can see, that one just looks so bad because it gets expanded evenly. The culprit appears to be the inline reference link in iron's Crystal structure entry. Links get expanded into a long line of plain text in the printable version view. It was changed to a ref tag, how does it look? Femto 18:15, 9 December 2006 (UTC)
Yes, for this very reason at WP:Chem we have had a policy of trying to avoid external refs in the text, and particularly in tables. Walkerma 02:11, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia Day Awards

Hello, all. It was initially my hope to try to have this done as part of Esperanza's proposal for an appreciation week to end on Wikipedia Day, January 15. However, several people have once again proposed the entirety of Esperanza for deletion, so that might not work. It was the intention of the Appreciation Week proposal to set aside a given time when the various individuals who have made significant, valuable contributions to the encyclopedia would be recognized and honored. I believe that, with some effort, this could still be done. My proposal is to, with luck, try to organize the various WikiProjects and other entities of wikipedia to take part in a larger celebrartion of its contributors to take place in January, probably beginning January 15, 2007. I have created yet another new subpage for myself (a weakness of mine, I'm afraid) at User talk:Badbilltucker/Appreciation Week where I would greatly appreciate any indications from the members of this project as to whether and how they might be willing and/or able to assist in recognizing the contributions of our editors. Thank you for your attention. Badbilltucker 17:38, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Periodic table as the place where elements are defined, and where they "live"

Once upon a time in the late 19th and early 20th centuries (basically, up to 1914), the elements in a sense did "live" on the periodic table, since their atomic numbers, which defined them as elements, were basically the numbers of the order in which they were placed on the table. Sometimes these were even different from the ordering the atomic weights, which actually were the only measurable thing chemists had. (See the famous example of cobalt and nickel, numbers 27 and 28, where nickel's atomic weight is actually less than cobalt's). But then in 1914 Henry Moseley, by showing that atomic number was measurable directly, changed all that. It wasn't long before it was realized that elements are defined by objective atomic number, and that this is the number of fundamental positive and negative charges in them (The story of how this was worked out is more complex than you read in the folk-history of chemistry, and involves people most have never heard of like Antonius Van den Broek. I'm in the process of fixing this up history up, now, in the middle of work on the Moseley article.)

Now, the relevance here is that most of the chemical element wiki articles start out (or used to start out) with something like "Carbon is an element with atomic number 6 in the periodic table." This language harks back to the bad old days when elements lived on the periodic table and seemed to be defined by their place on it. Nothing is now farther than the truth. Elements are now defined by atomic number (number of protons) and all this has nothing to do with the periodic table. In fact, a number of different periodic tables have been proposed, some of them quite different from that of Mendeleev's. So, in short, I've been taking this kind of language out of the element articles, one by one. I don't mind if the LEAD section includes information on where the element is placed on Mendeleev's table, but that would be by column and row, and it's easier to show it than talk about it (they keep changing the names of these darn columns anyway, and who can keep up??). But saying than an element is number blah-blah on the periodic table is not helpful at all. I think the more correct view is that it's "atomic number blah-blah," period. Table or no table. Comments? SBHarris 19:36, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

You are right, of course, that an element has an atomic number regardless of the periodic table. Perhaps it is true that the language harks to the old times, or perhaps it was just that someone thought it would be a really good idea to link to periodic table right at the beginning of the article and couldn't think of a better way to introduce it into the sentence (I've seen something like that many times on Wikipedia). Itub 15:36, 1 January 2007 (UTC)
Indeed, the phrasing dates waaay back to ye olden times when the element articles were wee little stubsies with only one sentence. You were glad to get a link to the periodic table! We had to carry those links on our backs, 20 miles through 6-foot snowdrifts, uphill both ways. And we liked it. And lived happily ever after. …Agreed, there are better ways of introducing an element, though personally I've little idea how the perfect opening sentences should look like. Femto 16:43, 1 January 2007 (UTC)
Perhaps a separate sentence? "Element (whatever) is a halogen/alkali metal/chalcogen/noble gas, etc., placed on column (whatever) of the periodic table along with similar elements which react chemically in a (short description) way." This works a lot of the time, and perhaps we can use it when it does. It breaks down a bit in the middle of the table and for heavier elements, where chemical similarities wander diagonally on the table, due to all those spin-orbit and relativistic effects on outer electron energy. I'm amazed that the classical Schrödinger repetative pattern show up grossly at all! But gosh, there it is. Anyway, in those cases, we can note that also, though it may have to come out of the LEAD and go into the overview. If there's no other reason to, is there any reason we SHOULD try to get the linked term periodic table into the text LEAD for ALL elements, given that there's a picture of it right there? Which is captioned with both linked terms periodic table and extended periodic table? SBHarris 18:47, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

Infobox thin spaces

Do the thin spaces ( ) in the infobox introduced by User:Coolhandscot don't display properly for anyone else or is it just me? Femto 12:57, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

For me at the moment (on IE6.0), they appear like standard spaces. Physchim62 (talk) 16:36, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

Uranium peer review and future FAC

Please help get uranium ready for FAC by editing the article and/or commenting on its peer review. Thanks! :) --mav 01:04, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

Chemical element is now the Core Topics Collaboration

Please help out on improving Chemical element, the current Wikipedia 1.0 Core Topics Collaboration. This Core Topics project has tried to identify the most important topics on Wikipedia, and improve these up to A-Class if possible. This particular article is now around the Start/B border, it should be a lot better for such an important topic. After all, which article could be more important for the elements project? Please help! Cheers, Walkerma 15:42, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

A new type of Periodic Table

Good. Now that I have your attention, allow me to introduce what some of you may have been waiting for. I have created the

as reference for Wikipedia articles on the elements. It is color-coded by the quality of the article.

It's easy to edit and I will update it periodically (tee hee). —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Cryptic C62 (talk • contribs) 01:12, 20 March 2007 (UTC).

Wikiproject Elements Userbox proposal

A discus
A discus
 This user is a member of WikiProject Elements.


What do people think? Abridged 14:52, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

I like it, and not just because it uses my awesome periodic table. I shall use it immediately! --Cryptic C62 · Talk 15:56, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
Looks nice.--Nick Y. 16:29, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
Looks good to me. Walkerma 20:09, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/Electron shells

Expert opinions on the above featured picture candidacy are requested. Thanks, trialsanderrors 19:55, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

Watchlist requests

Due to MZMcBride's efforts to migrate the element infoboxes into their own subpages, there will be a new template for each element article (not all have been created yet). Never hurts to have a few extra pairs of eyes around: please consider putting these pages on your watchlists.

Here's a set of &action=watch URLs for convenience:

Femto 13:57, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

Re-evaluation

It seems to me that some elements' article evaluations may be outdated. I've noticed some articles that are rated Start but could easily be called B, and the like. It seems the only time I ever have to update my periodic table is when elements are granted GA status. Would it be possible to assemble a team of expert evaluators to check the progress of the element articles? --Cryptic C62 · Talk 02:06, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

I'll help a bit with that if you like, though not till May - I did the original evaluations last summer. We agreed to downgrade some elements' importance evaluations as well (mainly from "high" to "Mid", I think), I just never got around to doing it.

Walkerma 16:54, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Francium FA

Huzzah! Francium is now an FA. The periodic table slowly gets more blue. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 16:10, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

Crystal structure

In the infobox template, "crystal structure" is in the category "atomic properties." But it is most certainly not an atomic property, because it depends on the interaction between multiple atoms in a solid, rather than on the properties of a single isolated atom (as all the other listed atomic properties are). It should be moved to the category "physical properties" directly under "phase". Chymicus 00:32, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

Makes sense somehow. But a covalent radius involves more than one atom too, and rearranging some hundred articles would mean work (a little less due to the newer infobox templates, but still). Can't we just pretend to be flexible with our terminology instead? :) Femto 16:10, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

In a sense, crystal structure is an atomic/molecular property. What crystal structure a solid assumes is determined by the quantum mechanics of that atom/molecule. Of course, it does require that there be a number of like atoms or molecules present and their kinetic energy to be low enough that they assume a crystalline structure. It does fit in other places as well. Fortran (talk) 22:11, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

Metallic radius

Is there any reason why the metallic radii (based on 12 coordinate atom) are not included in element infoboxes and in the atomic radii data sheet? The values for these differ from the atomic, covalent and calculated radii, for example Ti is 147pm. They are useful in describing interstitials, alloys etc., and bond lengths in compounds are often compared to the separation in the pure metal. Axiosaurus 11:19, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

First you need some reliable sources for the data, preferably some textbook. Femto 16:37, 11 June 2007 (UTC)
Greenwood and Earnshaw quote them. Where would be the best place to put them? A suggestion would be initially be a table in a new article, "Metallic radius", that once checked over could be merged into the atomic radius article and the atomic radius data sheet. Happy to do that, if that suits. Axiosaurus 18:44, 11 June 2007 (UTC)
Start with adding another column to atomic radii of the elements (data page). Other articles should build upon that as a centrally managed reference. Femto 22:10, 11 June 2007 (UTC)
OK. Axiosaurus 07:19, 12 June 2007 (UTC)
Done. See data page talk. Axiosaurus 09:15, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Radon

I did a little research on the history of the discovery of radon and the literature is not as clear as it is stated in the radon article! I put some references onto the talk page and a short discription of the events. A change or some additions would benefit the article. Thanks --Stone 20:08, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

Human health stuff

I am specifically interested in Magnesium, but looked at the Calcium page and saw the same problem. There are a lot of namby references to human health on the elements pages. The 'roles in biology' section seems a good idea but this should be short and to the point a real biochemistry angle. I think that only links to the health stuff should be on these pages. The actual health information can then go on a medical page somewhere(else). I will look at editing the human health stuff off the magnesium page and onto a medical page if no one objects? Reveldrummond 04:51, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

Mercury (element)

I've tried to clean up this article, but it's quite tough. I'd like some feedback on my edits so far, and any suggestions. Thanks. --Rifleman 82 14:40, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

Xenon

The xenon article is up for scientific peer review. Recently it has been expanded and more references added. Useful comments would be appreciated. Thanks. — RJH (talk) 03:14, 15 October 2007 (UTC)


Xenon nominated for Featured Article

Please see the discussion at Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Xenon. --Itub 11:05, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

The following comments were made on the Xenon article:
2) The density is expressed either in g/cm3 (or kg/m3) or in g/mL or kg/L. I think the article should use a uniform set of units. I suggest using g/cm3 and kg/m3. The same can be said about the units of volume: L and mL should be substituted with cm3 and m3.
Is there a preferred standard on which of these units to use for element articles? — RJH (talk) 19:14, 25 October 2007 (UTC)
1) Infobox lists fusion and boiling temperatures, but does not specify relevant pressures. While they are probably 1 atm, it is necessary to write them, because fusion and boiling (especially) points depend on pressure.
The problem for me is when the references don't list the pressures. I didn't see one listed in the CRC I googled. Does this need to be addressed on all element articles? — RJH (talk) 17:52, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

In the chemical infoboxes, I use g/cm3 for solids and g/mL for liquids. I think L and mL is much more commonly used than cc or cm3. --Rifleman 82 03:11, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

Thank you. — RJH (talk) 16:15, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

The article has been promoted. Congratulations to all involved, especially User:RJHall for all his efforts! --Itub 09:01, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Made it! Thanks for all of your excellent additions and corrections. — RJH (talk) 15:55, 5 November 2007 (UTC)


Hello to WPElements

I have changed the structure of the webpage in order for new users to surf easier. That means I have moved the templates stuff and 'Pages needing attention' to other pages. I hope people will find my changes to be benefic. Also I have created a page called 'Participants' for people who want to join/help to put down their names. Nergaal (talk) 12:47, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

Infoboxes

This project has obviously done a lot of good work - the consistency of the articles produced is excellent. Two things I noticed about the infoboxes though:

  • The images at the top of infoboxes are very neat but there seems to be minimal information presented to the reader about the additional diagrams above the periodic table. It could do with a key somewhere to explain what e.g. "60P 82N" means, the dots around the element symbols, the rings, the crystal structure diagram. I don't think it necessarily needs to be on the image itself but a link to a key (possibly stored as an image itself rather than as an article-space page) would be a good idea.
  • The "references" link to Chemical elements data references is a good idea for consistency. But the written content of that page is:
Recommended values for many properties of the elements, together with various references, are collected on these data pages. Any changes to the infobox data should be checked against these pages, and/or the available references should be expanded accordingly, so that the decision for or against certain values remains transparent and easily retraceable.
The portion I italicized is surely not appropriate for an article-space page? It is clearly a self-reference. If it is a warning about the perils of altering infoboxes, could that information for editors not be stored somewhere else? (No particular suggestions though!) 87.115.4.177 14:47, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
It seems the entire page is a self-reference. It might be a good idea to move the page(s?) to the Wikipedia: namespace. --MZMcBride 03:30, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

Periodic Table Legend

Please contribute to the discussion at Talk:Periodic table (standard)#Alternative legend. Thanks! Flying Jazz 15:48, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

Prepping elements for Veropedia

All elements are on the priority "to do" list for Veropedia. Many have already been cleaned up and uploaded, the latest being americium. Since there is a dedicated wikiproject, I was hoping you guys could help out.

Some of the common issues: referencing should be improved, lists should be cleared of trivia and written into prose where possible, disputed or unsourced statements should be removed (they can be subsequently re-added; the specific revision sans {{fact}} can be chosen for upload). In particular, references should use the <ref> style, and {{cite journal}} and related templates will be preferable for consistency. For more info on Veropedia, contact Danny (talk · contribs). Cheers! --Rifleman 82 (talk) 18:07, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

Many of which are also issues for most of wikipedia. It's a work in progresss... — RJH (talk) 23:35, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

Multiple infobox edits to examine

Could someone look at these [119] element and infobox edits? -- SEWilco (talk) 04:33, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Also this IP seems to be the same user: [120]. ManySome of his edits are wrong, at least those regarding the oxidation states of carbon and nitrogen. --Itub (talk) 06:57, 10 December 2007 (UTC)
And maybe also [121]. --Itub (talk) 07:09, 10 December 2007 (UTC)
Ok, now I've looked at all the contributions. Most of them are correct; the only errors I found are this user's removal of oxidation states -1, -2, and -3 from carbon and -1 from nitrogen. Nevertheless, most infoboxes are still missing many oxidation states (particularly the negative oxidation states for metals). For an almost complete table, see Greenwood, Norman N.; Earnshaw, Alan (1997). Chemistry of the Elements (2nd ed.). Butterworth-Heinemann. ISBN 978-0-08-037941-8., page 28. --Itub (talk) 09:09, 10 December 2007 (UTC)
Somebody should probably start List of oxidation numbers by element Nergaal (talk) 09:33, 10 December 2007 (UTC)
Done. --Itub (talk) 11:45, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Uuo is a GA

Not quite important element, but still neat.Nergaal (talk) 13:02, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Oxidation states of the elements and infoboxes

I've been having a disagreement with the user discussed above (under "Multiple infobox edits to examine"), now known as Plasmic Physics (talk · contribs). See User talk:Itub#Carbon. He insists that oxidation states involving homonuclear bonds and organic molecules should be excluded. This would exclude for example, oxidation states −1 and +1 for O, N, and C. My position is that we should include everything I've listed in List of oxidation states by element plus any other that we can document reliably. I'm posting here to request comments from third parties and help find a consensus. Thank you. --Itub (talk) 11:50, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

tell him to go away and google "oxidation+methanol." several hits will display results like oxidation of methanol to formaldehyde. he definately requires some organic chemistry training before he should be allowed to express his opinion on the subject of oxidation states in organics.Nergaal (talk) 14:19, 13 December 2007 (UTC)
suggestion: put in italics the oxidations states that are encountered only in organic compounds and only very rarely in inorganic compounds.Nergaal (talk) 14:23, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

I also see no reason to exclude homonuclear bonds and organic molecules which are certainly part of chemistry. Plasmic Physics did also make the more reasonable suggestion that an example be provided for each oxidation state (of each element), which is a good idea if someone wants to do the work. Dirac66 (talk) 15:26, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Giving examples is reasonable, but they don't well fit in an infobox, unless the examples are provided implicitly by links as is currently done in the carbon infobox. For example, -2 links to methanol, and -3 to ethane. --Itub (talk) 16:26, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

I am unhappy about the fact that a key part of my suggestion was left out, I did not suggest that you exclude said oxidation states from the entire article. I suggested you leave them out of the info box in the article. Please read more carefully in the future. I am attempting to take a neutral position with my suggestion so that all the oxidation states can be represented more orderly. --Plasmic Physics (talk) 05:43, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

he forgot to also mention that you insisted that methanol has the carbon in the oxidation state +4. Nergaal (talk) 11:38, 14 December 2007 (UTC)
Oxidation states are not the same as charge. Like many things in chemistry oxidation states are artificial constructs that are useful but not necessarily physically meaningful. I don't know why someone hasn't done this yet but here is the IUPAC definition of oxidation state :
"oxidation state
A measure of the degree of oxidation of an atom in a substance. It is defined as the charge an atom might be imagined to have when electrons are counted according to an agreed-upon set of rules: (l) the oxidation state of a free element (uncombined element) is zero; (2) for a simple (monatomic) ion, the oxidation state is equal to the net charge on the ion; (3) hydrogen has an oxidation state of 1 and oxygen has an oxidation state of -2 when they are present in most compounds. (Exceptions to this are that hydrogen has an oxidation state of -1 in hydrides of active metals, e.g. LiH, and oxygen has an oxidation state of -1 in peroxides, e.g. H2O2; (4) the algebraic sum of oxidation states of all atoms in a neutral molecule must be zero, while in ions the algebraic sum of the oxidation states of the constituent atoms must be equal to the charge on the ion. For example, the oxidation states of sulfur in H2S, S8 (elementary sulfur), SO2, SO3, and H2SO4 are, respectively: -2, 0, +4, +6 and +6. The higher the oxidation state of a given atom, the greater is its degree of oxidation; the lower the oxidation state, the greater is its degree of reduction." [122]
I think the definition is pretty clear with very little room for confusion. In case it is not clear this should put the nail in the proposals by plasma physic. Rule two applies to most of the situations that plasma physic thinks should be featured or whatever as an oxidation state but I see no reason to ignore or lessen the relevance or importance of the rest of the definition. There is no distinction made between those that fit rule 2 and those that fit other rules in this most definitive of definitions.--Nick Y. (talk) 20:57, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

Here is a good link for transition metals: http://www.chemcases.com/cisplat/cisplat06.htm Nergaal (talk) 19:19, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

Oxygen at FAC

Please comment at Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Oxygen. --mav (talk) 21:48, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

The FAC was premature, but the article was listed as a GA and the FAC push continues. See the talk page for details. --mav (talk) 03:38, 9 January 2008 (UTC)


FAC Ununoctium

There is a FAC nomination for Ununoctium. Those interested are welcome to leave feedback. Nergaal (talk) 00:37, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

Hello all. I thought it might be useful if the elements had a footer that was a small periodic table so it was easier to jump from one element article to the next. So I created this.

Let me know what you think of it. Remember (talk) 20:39, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

First of all, I am not 100% sure this should go on the pages of the more important elements. Secondly, you can access the nearby elements in each page (these are more relevant to the element discussed on the page) in the infobox at the top of the page. Thirdly, the table takes a huge amount of space (it could be reduced by at least 50% in height). Lastly, this idea might work well for groups like transitional metals or f-block elements. For the main groups I am not sure the idea is goig to be too useful.Nergaal (talk) 01:52, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
Well, I disagree (but I would since I went to the work of making it). I think it is useful to have a periodic table that people can have to jump easily from any element to any element and not just to close elements. As for making it smaller, I know how to reduce it in width but not height. If you know how to do this, feel free to revise it. Also, you may like the Germans periodic table footer at the bottom of their elements pages better ( You can see it here [123]). But I don't know how to code this version. As for the size, I think the fact that it is automatically collapsed should deal with this problem (unless of course you meant adding to the size of the page). Even though I disagree, thanks for the comments. Any other opinions?Remember (talk) 14:47, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

I think it is redundant with the periodic table in the element infobox. --Rifleman 82 (talk) 15:10, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

But with the element infobox you can't actually go to the individual element articles (unless you use the german version which does allow this). Instead you go to a picture of the periodic table or you have to go to the periodic table article and then go to the other elements. This is suppose to make it easier to jump around without having to go to the periodic table article each time. Remember (talk) 15:48, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
I am not sure how much use it would be to be able to jump from Oxygen to Uranium. Within the f-series nonetheless, it might be useful. If I really want to do that I need to press on the periodic table link within the infobox (this link is in the second row as opposed to the bottom of the page). And my one click I get a better nabigation than clicking at on the show at the bottom of the page. Nergaal (talk) 04:54, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

It would be much better to turn the nav images into image maps. --mav (talk) 02:24, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

mw:Extension:ImageMap should be helpful. --Rifleman 82 (talk) 02:55, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
I agree. But I don't know how to do this so I just did what I could in the meantime. I definitely agree that my footer needs lots of improving, but I thought it was useful for the time-being. Remember (talk) 14:01, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

curiosity question

why did this project kinda` died? It seems that in the past were quite many contributors, but now, besides mav and itub, there is barely anybody. Nergaal (talk) 12:20, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Most of the previous work was in establishing standard article structure and table, getting all the articles under that structure and expanding those articles beyond stubs. We are now at a completely new phase; to improve all the articles beyond B-class. Different people will naturally be attracted to different phases. This is a natural progression, I think. Our job is now to make sure we keep these project pages updated and continue to work on improving articles. That activity will attract editors that will be interested in this new phase. --mav (talk) 04:32, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
then the article structure guidelines should either be archived or expanded to show this new aim. Nergaal (talk) 04:35, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
It still is needed for reference; otherwise the structure of individual articles could start to significantly diverge. But yes, it should be de-emphasized. --mav (talk) 04:43, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Given the above, I suggest this: Move the structure, table color and locator image guidelines to the Templates page, rename that to reflect the new content mix and then move the To do & Goals stuff (minus the chemistry Pages needing attention, which isn't useful to us) to the main project page. That would require us to remove one tab though. --mav (talk) 04:54, 3 February 2008 (UTC)