WikiProject Physics/Archive1

= - general/basic/introductory concepts =

This is a problem that has been discussed elsewhere and was the main incentive for creating (besides the fact that it didn t exist yet). Now this is probably the best place to continue the discussion. A short summary of the pending discussion follows:

There have been discussions in several places on the structure of some subcategories in .

:I think things like tensors should be in mathematics categories, but it would be great if they would contain some physics examples. Otherwise we re going to have to make 2 articles about every applied mathematical thingy. Also because one of the things that is seriously lacking from mathematics articles is good motivation and intuition-stimulation I think we should cooperate more.-- 14:52, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

::I think would be more appropriate as it makes clear that the topics aren t necessarily basic in the sense of simple.

::I m sure that physics students looking here would appreciate a 05:56, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

:::Wild idea here - what if there was a 09:57, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

::::I like this idea. The page itself should include the uses of the mathematical processes, while their derivations and such could be referenced to the math page. For instance, talking about something as simple as differential calculus and taking dx/dt for velocity. More of a Uses of math in physics thing. For students who wish to learn how to take the derivative, that page can be reference linked. -- 00:36, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

:My suggestion is similar to what has been written above. We need to separate the introductory concepts, which should be accessible to a lay person, from the basic concepts, which generally are not. For example, you can talk about 09:57, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

::Yes, you put it very clear - the introductory topics should be differentiated from the fundamental ones. For starters, I would identify fundamental topics (looking at 21:52, Jun 23, 2005 (UTC)

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I have just created June 28, 2005 17:30 (UTC)

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Some time has passed, so I nominated June 28, 2005 20:12 (UTC)

= World Year of Physics =

I suppose I finally have an appropriate place to ask people to look at 15:21, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

= The list of articles that attract crank edits =

As there were voices that 15:08, 2005 Jun 24 (UTC)

:That list is not exclusively about bogus physics theories. Even if it was I wouldn t want it associated with physics in any way. Please remove that again. The physics portal is not the place for it. -- 17:49, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)

:Yes, please remove this list. Above all, WikiProjects are not intended to host subject articles, including original research. 18:56, Jun 24, 2005 (UTC)

::Ugh. multiple problems with this list. 1) some of the theories are pure crackpot, e.g. timecube. 2) some of the topics are highly speculative but academically acceptable (possible changes in fine structure const, etc.) 3) some topics which are records of historical fiascos ( 19:56, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)

:::Of course, most of these theories are pure crackpot. For this reason, they are on the list. And the list is here, so that we can watch, what s going on there. Isn t the task of WikiProject Physics to ensure the correct presentation of physics in Wikipedia -- 20:10, 2005 Jun 24 (UTC)

:::And BTW,

:::: I think that it would be desirable for part of the wikiproj to be helping keep dodgy psuedoscience in check. So if the list could be restructured to contain *only* the wacko psuedoscience, and a suitable header put on, would that be OK 21:20, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC). ::::: Heim Theory should not be lumped in with wacko pseudoscience. It is definitely not pseudoscience as, e.g. this year aerospace applicaitons thereof won a prize for best technical paper in one section of the 12:06, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

::: The way you guys put it makes it sound reasonable :) that is to have such a repository for monitoring pseudophysics topics. 23:41, Jun 24, 2005 (UTC)

:The list should be split into the different categories that linas identified. List 1) shouldn t be part of this project. What we need to keep in check is what is supposed to be physics and what is not. The other two lists would be very welcome. -- 10:34, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I misunderstood the purpose of the list. Lets change the name to The list of articles that attract crank edits. This is a list of (mostly) legit articles on (mostly) noteworthy topics, (most of which happen to be noteworthy crank topics), that, unfortunately, tend to get vandalized in subtle ways. The name change would completely resolve my initial discomfort on reading the list. We can add 1 July 2005 00:39 (UTC)

Yikes! Surely what you understood when you read what I wrote can t possibly be what I meant when I wrote it We can add 1 July 2005 01:21 (UTC)

= 1941 Reich-Einstein experiment =

Has anybody a reference and quote what Einstein said about the June 30, 2005 08:19 (UTC)

:There are only 4 google hits in this regard.-- 30 June 2005 13:56 (UTC)

:Ronald Clark, Einstein: The Life and TImes Reich is discussed on pages 689-90 paperback ed. He also tried to ignore his involvement with W. R. This eccentric distraught figure seems already have slipped down the slope towards charlatanry or madness by the time he asked E to investigate his discovery... Reich called on E. in his Mercer St home on Jan 13, 1941. He told me, his [Reich s] wife wrote later, that the conversation w. E. had been extremely friendly and cordial, that E. was easy to talk to , that their conversation had lasted almost five hours. E was willing to investigate the phenomena that R. had described to him , and a special little accumulator would have to be build and taken to him. Certainly there was a further visit , and certainly E. tested the apparatus. ... E found a commonplace explanation of the phenomenon which R had noted, and said so in polite terms. The postscript -- contained in _the Einstein Affair_ a privately printed booklet from R s own press was spread across the following 3 yr of their correspondence. Reich disputed E s findings and E was dismayed that his name might be wrongly used to support R s theory 1 July 2005 22:25 (UTC)

:Denis Brian, Einstein: A Life . Wiley, 1996. 325-327, 382, 399. ... a marathon conversation that lasted almost five hours, during which R. had him look through an instrument called an orgonoscope. Exactly what E saw has not been reported. ... E. seemed impressed. He agreed that if the temperature in an enclosed object was raised without any apparent source of energy, as R. asserted, it would be a remarkable discovery -- a bomb. .. They agreed to meet again, when R would bring an orgone-energy accumulator for E to put to the test. As Reich was leaving, he asked, Can you understand now why everyoune thinks I m mad And how! replied E. , perhaps recalling all those who had called his own ideas crazy. .... Reich took it [ORAC] to Princeton on Feb 1.... A week later E sent R his report. He wrote that although he observed a difference of temperature, there was a simple explanation that had nothing to do with the orgone-accumulators. Convection current ... E. advised the bitterly disappointed R not to be carried away by an illusion.... R bombared him with ... letters ... E did not reply. ... Reich s wife believed that E saw the phenomena, may have had an inkling of their significance, but was unwilling to get involved in a highy controversial scientific discovery at a time when he was deeply engrossed with developing atomic energy 2 July 2005 03:00 (UTC)

I ve reverted a bulk copy [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.phptitle=Wikipedia_talk%3AWikiProject_Physics&diff=18168288&oldid=17992807] from July 5, 2005 08:49 (UTC)

= Help needed: Generalized theory of gravitation =

Can please someone check July 5, 2005 18:30 (UTC)

:The article currently doesn t say much, and what little it says matches what little I know about Einstein. He was obsessed on the topic; he wasn t the only one; one of the earliest attempts is the 5 July 2005 22:52 (UTC)

::Oh, golly, that page started life as a crank page, making reference to secret experiments done by the Navy to make ships invisible ... gag. Indeed, it should be watched. 5 July 2005 23:04 (UTC)

I m currently having an edit war on that page with the tradiational tesla-phile anons. Please make sure you check which version yuo re looking at... here is a diff from my version to the anons [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.phptitle=Generalized_theory_of_gravitation&diff=18218192&oldid=18204413]. I think the anon is being too specific: from reading Pais, it seems to me that there is no one version of Einsteins theory, just a succession of papers looking for a theory. 2005-07-06 09:24:25 (UTC).

I ve tried to make this a real page on the early history of unified theories, as the title is appropriate for such an attempt. 8 July 2005 00:53 (UTC)

=Pseudoscience subject =

I placed 8 July 2005 00:53 (UTC)

*I object. I doesn t make sense to place it here. -- 09:42, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

= Lack of references =

The foundation of a good article should be good references or at least a reference. The following major articles in Physics don t have any references: *Antimatter 02:20, 16 July 2005 (UTC) *Electrostatics 01:00, 15 July 2005 (UTC) *Electromagnetic radiation 01:32, 16 July 2005 (UTC) *Force 03:42, 15 July 2005 (UTC) *Gravity 01:40, 16 July 2005 (UTC) *Harmonic oscillator 22:38, 14 July 2005 (UTC) *Magnetism 22:11, 16 July 2005 (UTC) *Optics 03:24, 15 July 2005 (UTC) *Statistical mechanics 01:55, 16 July 2005 (UTC)

Some good, modern references can be found on the 22:49, 13 July 2005 (UTC)

:A lot of general physics pages could benefit from some of these: :* :* :* :-- 01:10, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

In some branches of physics links are references. JabberWok: please note that some of your (well meant) edits which separate out references from external links do not reflect this. Maybe it would be better to go back to those edits and check whether indeed the separation is meaningful. 11:25, July 18, 2005 (UTC)

:Agree, separating book references from article references from links is not a good idea, especially as a number of books and articles are online. 13:07, 18 July 2005 (UTC)

:Oops. I agree as well. Books, preprints, and published journal articles that are available online belong under References. In my flurry of adding reference sections this weekend I probably messed up (more than once). So by all means make changes you think will make things better. No need to ask me, but thanks for making me aware of my mistakes. 22:39, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

= Chemical Physics =

I created a Chemical physics category as a subcategory of applied and interdisciplinary physics. I was browsing through physics stubs and decided such a category was needed for some of the stubs. I then noticed that there was a Physical chemistry subcategory. The differences between Physical Chemistry and Chemical physics are hard to pin down, but, for example, a paper from the Journal of Chemical Physics paper is quite distinct from a Journal of Physical Chemistry A/B paper. What are peoples thoughts on having both categories, or should I ask for the category to be deleted and put any articles into Physical Chemistry 00:19, 16 July 2005 (UTC)

:Perhaps the categories you are looking for are , argh...

:: I recated 13:51, 18 July 2005 (UTC)

:::To me, nuclear physics is about pions, nucleons, the nuclear valley, gaussian random matrices, etc. By contrast, I always assumed that nuclear chemistry was about separating isotopes of uranium, hyperfine structure, NMR, etc. Isn t it 01:13, 20 July 2005 (UTC ::::I would more or less agree; although some nuclear chemists work on random matrices, and more on the nuclear valley and Island of stability, but I think even they would call their work nuclear physics. Classifying NMR as nuclear chemistry though is funny. I was a theoretician in an NMR group as a grad student and depending on what projects we did we called our work chemical physics, physical chemistry, biophysicis or solid state physics, but defintely not nuclear physics. Prehaps ~50 years ago 01:26, 20 July 2005 (UTC)

:::Wow. WP has no article on the 01:13, 20 July 2005 (UTC) :Again, my approach to terminology may be naive; I m not a chemist. However, keep in mind that most readers, and some writers, are going to be as naive as I; and a distinction between physical chemistry and chemical physics (I agree there is one, I might even be able to explain it) will be lost. That s why I went for molecular physics . 13:30, 18 July 2005 (UTC)

:: I don t like the idea of putting all of chemical physics into molecular physics. I actually was surprised to see atomic physics and molecular physics separated. Usually atomic and molecular physics are lumped into one category, not molecular and chemical physics. See the American Physical Society divisions, which put atomic molecular and optical physics into one category, or browse through physics department web pages: where you will usually see atomic and molecular physics in one research group. Though to muddle the waters a little further, the journal Molecular Physics , considers itself a journal in the field of chemical physics. 13:51, 18 July 2005 (UTC)

:::Keep in mind that WP is as much about historical divisions as about current research classification. I d prefer to say that atomic physics is that stuff that got figured out between 1895 to about 1935 , with maybe a few more modern key concepts thrown in. I m agnostic about other divisions, except to say I believe a category should never have more than 120 articles, ideally 30-40 articles, and never fewer than 5. It should also serve lay audiences as well as scholars. The divisions I created may be inappropriate, they where a rough cleaning-of-house; I recatted something like 500 articles in one day; some no doubt poorly; please do recat if you know better. 01:13, 20 July 2005 (UTC) ::::I noticed :) I agree with almost all your cats, though some of the molecular physics ones I have recated though into physical chemistry or chemical physics. 01:26, 20 July 2005 (UTC)

:::::I agree with the naive point of view expressed by said) they are very vague for the lay. So I suggest to rename chemical physics physical chemistry but I would also agree with the other way around. Molecular physics should stand on its own. It could be merged with molecular chemistry if this category would exist. Moreover I would agree if one could make molecular physics and chemical physics/physical chemistry belong to both physics and chemistry. The chemists would of course prefer physical chemistry to chemical physics and the same would be true for chemical physics and physical chemistry (the last one preferred by the chemists, the second by the physicists).

= Classical Items should not be forgotten =

Physical Chemistry used to include a discussion of thermodynamic potentials and the like (Gibbs and Helholtz free energy, fugacity, enthalpy, free enthalpy and so on.) There are (or were) good texts on it and topnotch physicists such as Arnold Sommerfeld and Michael Faraday built it and kept it alive. Unfortunately, some modern physics texts skip most of that stuff to do a lot of statistical mechanics, transport theory (usually idealized, for example so as to avoid dealing with excitation of different states of the colliding molecules, which are imagined to be elastic spheres). Wikipedia would offer a good place to keep up interest in physical chemistry or chemical physics. Obviously, practising chemical, solid state, and plasma (and so on) engineers know about these topics and many more advanced ones. Well, I see that some of the classical stuff is sketched under 17:29, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

=Improvement drive=

13:46, 16 July 2005 (UTC)

= Vfd in progress =

If anyone is interested, there is a vfd in progress of several related math/physics/recreational-math interface pages (written mainly from the recreational math aspect):

I draw your attention to this because I think (for some of the pages at least) a delete is a little unjustified. I choose to use this page in the hope that, like me, many other inhabitants were drawn into physics partially through recreational maths. -- 08:54, July 20, 2005 (UTC)

It should be noted that the articles are up for VFD as neologistic categorisation by Karl Scherer. Coupled with a distinct lack of non-categorisation content, existing only to fluff the categorisation enough to have an article for each class. The 100+ that have already been VFD d were done so for predominantly the same reason.

Wikipedia is meant to be an encyclopedia, and not something to push your POV of how things should be categorised. Neither is it a collection of all information under the sun. 22:10, 20 July 2005 (UTC)

:For the record, User:-Ril- s remarks seem to be in direct contradiction with the content of what has actually been nominated for VfD. I detect no neologisms in these articles, I detect no fluff. Karl Scherer seems to be a capable author who creates reasonable, encyclopedic content. If you want POV pushing, fluff, non-encyclopedic content, and everything under the sun , then dial up just about any pokemon character or TV sitcom or rock-n-roll album or nuclear submarine or underwater power line on WP; there are zillions of these. Seems immature to attack legit content when there is a vast ocean of stuff like that on WP. 01:16, 21 July 2005 (UTC)

::I must agree. Although, a few of the articles seem to be conceptual duplicates. 06:08, July 21, 2005 (UTC)

= nonsense at nonlinear magnetic field =

We ve got a new stub at 23:25, 22 July 2005 (UTC) :It sounds like it would qualify for deletion as original research, due to the I have interpreted this question as being identical ... . But a redirection to magnetic field might work as well. 00:30, 23 July 2005 (UTC) ::You re right, the I interpret does imply that this is original research. Disagree with redirect to magnetic field (see 00:35, 23 July 2005 (UTC)