Talk:Arthur Compton/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: Martinvl (talk · contribs) 10:19, 7 August 2013 (UTC)

GA review (see here for what the criteria are, and here for what they are not)

1. It is reasonably well written.

   a (prose, no copyvios, spelling and grammar): b (MoS for lead, layout, word choice, fiction, and lists):

   See reviewer's comments regarding article structure
   Please note that other comments might be added while checking prose etc.

2. It is factually accurate and verifiable.

   a (reference section): b (citations to reliable sources): c (OR):

3. It is broad in its coverage.

   a (major aspects): b (focused):

   See reviewer's comments below regarding layout

4. It follows the neutral point of view policy.

   Fair representation without bias:

5. It is stable.

   No edit wars, etc.:

   Only significant contributor in the last two months has been the proposer

6. It is illustrated by images and other media, where possible and appropriate.

   a (images are tagged and non-free content have fair use rationales): b (appropriate use with suitable captions):

7. Overall:

   Pass/Fail:

   Hold until sections marked have been resolved
   Please note that I still checking section 1a

Reviewer's Comments

A few general comments - please feel free to disagree.

Prose

Lede

1. Were his brother's activities so important that they warrant a mention in the first paragraph of the article? I personally don't think that they warrant a mention in the lede. I suggest that mention of the brother be removed from the lede altogether. I also suggest a mention of the Manhattan Project in the first paragraph.

   Y I'm always nervous about mentioning the Manhattan Project. It is of course the reason why I am updating the article. Added.

   Y Removed brothers from the lead. Hawkeye7 (talk) 08:18, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

2. Suggest replacing "... wave nature of light had been well-demonstrated, and the idea light ..." with "... wave nature of light had been well-demonstrated but the idea light …".

   Y I'm not sure this reads better. Hawkeye7 (talk) 08:18, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

3. Suggest replacing "Reports that he wrote ... " with "His reports …".

   Y Done. Hawkeye7 (talk) 08:18, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

4. Suggest replacing "In 1945, plutonium began being produced in the production reactors at the Hanford Site." with "In 1945, plutonium production began in the Hanford Site production reactors."

   Y Re-worded. Hawkeye7 (talk) 08:18, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

Early life

1. Who was a member of the Alpha Tau Omega fraternity - Elias, Arthur or both?

   Y Both. Re-worded. Hawkeye7 (talk) 08:18, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

2. Suggested replacing "Arthur's eldest brother, Karl also attended Wooster, earned a PhD in physics from Princeton University in 1912, and was president of MIT from 1930 to 1948" with "Arthur's eldest brother Karl, who also attended Wooster and earned a PhD in physics from Princeton University in 1912, was president of MIT from 1930 to 1948".

   Y Done. Hawkeye7 (talk) 08:18, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

3. What was the basis for Compton's "method for demonstrating the rotation of the Earth" ? A one-liner is sufficient. Suggested text is: "In May 1913 Science published a paper by Compton in which he described an experiment where an examination of the motion of water in a circular tube demonstrated the rotation of the earth."

   Y Done. Hawkeye7 (talk) 08:18, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

4. "He became a physics instructor at the University of Minnesota ..." should be a new paragraph - it is unrelated to his family life.

   Y Done. Hawkeye7 (talk) 08:18, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

5. The last sentence "Compton was greatly impressed by the Cavendish scientist ..." doesn't make sense - which scientist, Thompson, Rutherford, Darwin or Eddington?

   Y My word yes. Hawkeye7 (talk) 08:18, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

Physics professor

1. If this was a dual appointment, consider dropping comma in phrase ".. appointed Wayman Crow Professor of Physics, and Head of the Department ..". (Although the reviewer uses UK English, but the article should retain US English).

   Y Dropped. Hawkeye7 (talk) 08:27, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

2. Suggest replacing "In 1922, he found that X-ray wavelengths increase due to scattering of the radiant energy by "free electrons". The scattered quanta have less energy than the quanta of the original ray" with "In 1922, he found that X-rays quanta scattered by free electrons had longer wavelengths and in accordance with Planck's relation less energy than the incoming X-rays, the suplus energy having been transferred to the electrons."

   Y Done. Hawkeye7 (talk) 08:27, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

3. "... up to sulfer". On what basis are you counting - the periodic table?

   Y Yes. Added. hard to believe they spell sulphur that way. Hawkeye7 (talk) 08:27, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

4. Suggest replacing "The effort to prove Compton's interpretation of the Compton effect was wrong was spearheaded by William Duane from Harvard University." with "William Duane from Harvard University spearheaded Tan effort to prove Compton's interpretation of the Compton effect was wrong."

   Y

5. Did he measure cosmic rays at ground level only, or did he use balloons as well?

   There is no mention of balloons. Hawkeye7 (talk) 08:27, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

Manhattan Project

1. I think that a phrase is missing from the sentence "In April 1941, along with Vannevar ... report on the NDRC uranium program". As it stands, it confuses me.

   Y Re-worded. Hawkeye7 (talk) 08:43, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

2. Is the sentence "In October he wrote another report on the practicality of an atomic bomb." a stand-alone fact, or does the rest of the paragraph describe the contents of the report? Suggest rewording to clarify.

   Y Re-worded. Hawkeye7 (talk) 08:43, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

3. Unless you feel it politically sensitive, it might be appropriate to rewrite the sentence naming Fermi as "He and Enrico Fermi calculated the critical mass of U-235 to be xxx kilograms". (It takes up no more article-space, but adds extra information to the article).

   Y It wasn't much of a guess. If you try working it out yourself, you'll quickly see the problem; you need the nuclear cross section, which was not known at the time. Hawkeye7 (talk) 08:43, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

4. Suggest replacing " ... uranium to plutonium, find ways to chemically separate ..." with " ... uranium to plutonium, to find ways to chemically separate ...". (Each clause will start with the preposition "to").

   Y Re-worded. Hawkeye7 (talk) 08:43, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

5. "It fell to Compton to decide which of the different types of reactor designs ...". Was this before or after the building of the Chicago pile?

   Before. Hawkeye7 (talk) 08:43, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

6. Consider a new paragraph at the point "A major crisis for the plutonium program occurred in ..." (The major crisis was a production problem, not a planning problem).

   Y Done. Hawkeye7 (talk) 08:43, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

7. I suggest using active rather than passive voice for the final sentence of this section.

Return to Washington University

1. Suggest replacing text "... to return to ..." with "... and returned to ...".
2. Are you able to name any of the "renowned scientific researchers" or "historians"?

Philosophy

1. Suggest adding the text "(published 1935)" after the text "anticipating the Schrödinger's cat paradox."

Y Hawkeye7 (talk) 08:46, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

Personal details

No specific comments on the current text, but see elsewhere about structure of the article.

Legacy

1. Rather than a single paragraph, break his list of honours up into a series of one-line paragraphs or present as a list - see Winston Churchill for an example.

   N Keeping it as is, per WP:USEPROSE

• OK Martinvl (talk) 10:17, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

Structure

I feel that this article focuses too much on the subject's biography and not enough on his contributions to knowledge. I suggest a slight restructuring as follows:

• Early life
• Career
  • Physics Professor
  • Manhattan Project
  • Return to Washington University
• Contributions to knowledge
  • The Compton Effect
  • Cosmic Rays
  • Philosophy
• Person Details
• Legacy

This restructuring will reduce the number of sections making the contents list more readable. Apart from a new subsection on the Compton Effect (see below), virtually all the text needed is already in the article.

Compton Effect

Given that Compton was given the Nobel Prize for his discovery of what we now know as the Compton effect, this article should give more breadth to his work in that area, especially when the number of words dedicated to his work in that area is similar to the number of words dedicated to his work on cosmic rays (where the Wikipedia article does not mention him). I suggest something similar to the introductory section of Compton effect#Description of the phenomenon.

• Y Done. Originally, I was a bit iffy about putting formulae into the biographical articles, but I added one to Niels Bohr, and when I changed my mind and tried to remove it, I hot rapped on the knuckles. Since then I have added formulae to a lot of articles, most notably Max Born. He has it on his tombstone, so why not his article? Hawkeye7 (talk) 03:17, 18 August 2013 (UTC)

Personal details

I feel that this section is a little weak. Maybe it could be beefed up a bit by moving some the details about his brothers in the section "Early life" into this section. It might also be worthwhile naming his two sons and mentioning that John is also in academia (details here)

• Y Got rid of this. Moved the stuff on his religion into the first section. Hawkeye7 (talk) 03:24, 18 August 2013 (UTC)

Overall

This is an article that I think is close to being worthy of "Good Article" status. I thought that the structuring of the article could do with a little tweaking, though of course I am open to being persuaded otherwise; also that there could be a little more discussion about the Compton effect, without which this article would probably not have existed. Once these points have been tidied up I am sure that it will be worthy of "Good Article" status - well done.

I will be expanding it on the weekend. That I would not be working on the article but for the Compton Effect (which led to his Nobel Prize) is a thought provoking point. I am here because of his involvement with the Manhattan Project. The three major projects (electromagnetic, gaseous, plutonium) were all headed by Nobel Prize winners: Lawrence, Urey and Compton. Lawrence's Nobel was for electromagnetic (the cyclotron) and Urey's for isotope separation (deuterium), so they were heading efforts in their field of expertise. Compton was not; so he was purely an administrator. The fourth scientist-project leader was subsequently Oppenheimer, who was working in his field, but did not have the Nobel Prize. The question is whether Compton would have become a university administrator earlier, and participated in that capacity. Hawkeye7 (talk) 21:59, 15 August 2013 (UTC)

Discussion

• I am an Wikimania in Hong Kong this week, so I do not have access to my books. Please feel free to take your time over the review, and I will get to work on resolving problems with the article as soon as I can. Hawkeye7 (talk) 02:23, 8 August 2013 (UTC)

• Will do - BTW, do you have access to JSTOR. If not, I can draft a suggested sentence for Compton's experiment that demonstrated the rotation of the earth. Martinvl (talk) 05:08, 8 August 2013 (UTC)

• I have access to JSTOR, but not to everything; only the stuff that the University of Canberra subscribes to. So, please do. That would be great Hawkeye7 (talk) 05:59, 8 August 2013 (UTC)

• The suggested text is now in my set of comments. Martinvl (talk) 16:54, 8 August 2013 (UTC)

• I have signed off the text changes.
• I trust that the minor text corrections I made are in order.
• Do you have any views on my comments regarding the structure and a bit more detail on the Compton effect? Martinvl (talk) 13:01, 15 August 2013 (UTC)

• • I will be expanding the Compton effect on the weekend. I am uncertain about the proposed restructure, because in other articles with a similar structure, editors have indicated that they don't like the articles having a topical structure, with events jumping back and forth in time. Hawkeye7 (talk) 21:15, 15 August 2013 (UTC)

• It might be worth looking at the structure of articles such as Albert Einstein, James Clerk Maxwell, Plato and Napoleon. All of these articles have a biography (which takes up about half the article), followed by topical discussions on specific aspects of the person's life. Having said this, this is your article - I am merely advising. Martinvl (talk) 06:09, 16 August 2013 (UTC)

Hi Hawkeye7, The changes that you are making are looking good. Let me know when you are ready for me to look at them again in detail. Martinvl (talk) 13:46, 20 August 2013 (UTC)

It's ready. Go ahead. Hawkeye7 (talk) 19:38, 20 August 2013 (UTC)

I have made some minor changes - are you happy with them?

In particular I moved two sentences, one from the subsection "Compton effect" and the other from "X-Rays" into the lead-in for the section "Physics Professor" - many years ago I worked on a manual for DEC and one of their house style rules was that every section had to have a lead-in of at least one sentence, something to which I always try to adhere. Martinvl (talk) 05:18, 21 August 2013 (UTC)

I have upgraded the article to "Good Article". Well done! Martinvl (talk) 05:21, 21 August 2013 (UTC)