Talk:Surface roughness

Translation of image

I agree with 40.140.132.20. The image must be translated for the English Wiki! And is necessary that roughness parameters be adapted according to standard ISO 4287:1997, "Geometrical product specifications (GPS)-Surface texture: Profile method -Terms, definitions and surface texture parameters". Dorimedont (talk) 06:17, 16 May 2017 (UTC) from Romania

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India Education Program course assignment

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definition of roughness

I don't agree on the definition given, that roughness is a measure of deviation from a plane. It is better to say that is related to the spatial variability of surfaces.

176.206.238.147 (talk) 12:49, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

I agree, that definition is only valid for plane surfaces and not all surfaces are plane. Sometimes they're convex, concave, parabolic, hyperbolic, etc... But I also think your definition is far too vague and technical for the general reader. Spatial variability of surfaces? That could mean a lot of different things, or to most readers probably nothing at all. And how do we define this spatial variability?

Surface roughness is a measurement that is often used in optics, such as mirrors, for example. But if you note in the mirror article, there is another property of surfaces that has to do with spatial variability, which is called "surface quality" or "surface accuracy", which is more related to deviations on a much larger length/width scale (although they can be both much larger or much smaller than surface roughness in depth). One could picture the differences as the surface of sand in the desert. On one scale you have the large dunes, which is the overall shape of the surface. Then you have the ripples across the surface of the dunes, which is the surface quality. Then, on the smallest scales you have the texture of the sand itself, which is your surface roughness. So if anything, I think a definition that the reader can understand is that surface roughness is a measurement of a surface's texture, or something more along those lines. Zaereth (talk) 19:00, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

Hi,

surface texture could be a good option; but also this term should be defined. I come from earth sciences and there the multiscale character (sometime fractal) of surface roughness/texture is a inherent factor. I used surface spatial variability purposely to maintain the meaning open to multiple fields. I see (if I understand well) that in surface metrology they consider roughness as short-range surface texture; so referred to a specific scale. On the on other hand, spatial variability should be quite intuitive, and also connected to geostatistics if one want the link with theory. Honestly now I have no other ideas; I think the message should be that the definition has some fuzziness in it. 151.71.84.146 (talk) 13:58, 14 March 2023 (UTC)

I agree that your definition is quite correct. I have no argument there. My thing is writing, however, and I like to try to make technical and scientific articles more accessible to the general public. Writing is hard, and technical articles like this are often shrouded in obfuscation and jargon, making it very difficult for the general reader to follow. Wikipedia articles are too often written by specialists --for specialists-- but writing for a broader audience is much more difficult.

It may be intuitive to a college-level student. What I'm saying is that an encyclopedia should be written for a general audience, which means everyone who reads, whether child or adult, scientist or layperson, should be able to come away feeling that they've learned something. Most children and laypeople are only going to read the first paragraph or two. A good majority of all readers will only read the first sentence, simply because it's a word they encountered somewhere and they're wondering, "What the heck is that?"

So the lede, and especially the first sentence, should be written at a sixth-grade level. It should be as concise and precise as possible, but it's ok if it's rather vague, because the more technical and college-level stuff can be expanded upon later in the body, or even to some degree later in the lede. The first sentence is just a starting point which is used as context for building upon. I doubt anyone on a sixth-grade level would really know what "spatial variability" means, but textures are something they learn about in kindergarten, so that's a term that would make sense to most readers. What exactly that means in terms of space and scale would better be described in the following sentences. The question I usually ask myself is to imagine explaining it to a small child, and they ask, "Ok, but what does that mean in English?"

As a good example of that, I'll once again use the mirror article. For the longest time it started with people trying to explain it in terms of specular reflection, and other people coming along saying, "Specular reflection? WTF is that all supposed to mean?" It was far better to start off very simply by describing a mirror in terms that everyone who has ever seen a mirror can understand. It's an object that reflects an image. Details about light waves and surface roughness (ie: specular reflection) were better saved for the second paragraph. For a general audience, it's just easier to follow if we start out simple using easily understandable terminology, because we have plenty of room to elaborate on it later. Zaereth (talk) 22:19, 14 March 2023 (UTC)

Hi Again,

what about if we say, following your discussion, if we use the definition given by a dictionary, like "the quality of not being even or smooth". We could rewrite in this way:

"Surface roughness can be regarded as the quality of a surface of not being smooth and it is hence linked to human (haptic) perception of the surface texture. From a mathematical perspective it is related to the spatial variability structure of surfaces, and inherently it is a multiscale property. It has different interpretations and definitions depending from the disciplines considered."

Now it should have different levels of interpretations Strevisani (talk) 09:49, 17 March 2023 (UTC)