User:RockMagnetist/organization of magnetism pages

An overview of magnetism pages:

• Dipole - supposedly about electric and magnetic dipoles, but has a lot of material about other kinds of dipole. There is also a page called Electric dipole moment, but not one on magnetic dipoles or magnetic dipole moments (however, there is a redirect to Magnetic moment#Magnetic dipoles. Clearly, electric dipoles and magnetic dipoles have a lot in common. Which of Dipole, Electric dipole (moment) and Magnetic dipole should have their own pages, and how should material be divided between them? Should Electric dipole moment become Electric dipole?

• Also, where is the dividing line between dipole and the multipole expansion?

• Magnetic dipole-dipole interaction: Very sketchy. A better coverage is in Force between magnets. Should Magnetic dipole-dipole interaction be merged with Dipole? Should the material from Force between magnets be moved to one of these pages?

• Force between magnets: Does this page need to exist? Most of it could be incorporated into Magnetic field, with the rest in Dipole or Magnetic dipole.

• According to the disambiguation info, Magnetic field is the place to put info on fields that magnets and currents produce. Some of this info, however, is also in Magnetism and Magnet.

• And where do Magnetostatics and Demagnetizing field fit in??

• Magnetic pole strength - merge with something else? Also, seems to promote the anti-magnetic charge POV.

Treatments of the magnetic dipole field

Much the same treatment of the field of a magnetic dipole can be found in Dipole#Field of a static magnetic dipole, Magnetic moment#Magnetic dipoles, Magnetic dipole–dipole interaction, and Force between magnets. Are all these needed? The most specific, Magnetic dipole–dipole interaction, is also the most sketchy. The redirect for Magnetic dipole goes to Magnetic moment#Magnetic dipoles. Conspicuously missing from this list is Magnetic field, which the disambiguation line says is "about a mathematical description of the magnetic influence of an electric current or magnetic material."

Is it really useful to have a Dipole page that is explicitly about magnetic and electric dipoles? Why not follow the approach of most encyclopedias and have Magnetic dipole and Electric dipole (the latter instead of Electric dipole moment), while Dipole is just a disambiguation page? Any general mathematical statements about dipoles could be in Multipole expansion.

See also Residual dipolar coupling.

Contents of a magnetic dipole article

1. qualitative description of the dipole field (rotational symmetry; relation of poles to N and S; closed field lines)
2. dipolar approximation to Earth's field (see Dipole model of the Earth's magnetic field, L-shell and Geomagnetic latitude)
3. dipole radiation
4. spin dipoles

WikiProject Physics discussion

A discussion on organizing material on dipoles is archived here. I have copied the discussion below.

Much the same treatment of the field of a magnetic dipole can be found in Dipole#Field of a static magnetic dipole, Magnetic moment#Magnetic dipoles, Magnetic dipole–dipole interaction, and Force between magnets. The most specific, Magnetic dipole–dipole interaction, is also the most sketchy. The redirect for Magnetic dipole goes to Magnetic moment#Magnetic dipoles. Conspicuously missing from this list is Magnetic field, whose disambiguation line says it is "about a mathematical description of the magnetic influence of an electric current or magnetic material."

Where should the material on magnetic dipoles go? Is it really useful to have a Dipole page that is explicitly about magnetic and electric dipoles? Why not follow the approach of most encyclopedias and have Magnetic dipole and Electric dipole (the latter instead of Electric dipole moment), while Dipole is just a disambiguation page? Any general mathematical statements about dipoles could be in Multipole expansion.

Hmm, not sure what to make of this. IMHO, at the very least Electric dipole moment and magnetic moment (aka magnetic dipole moment) should stay as separate articles. These are important physical quantities that depending on the situation may or may not have anything to do with actually dipoles. (For example there is a whole industry of trying to measure the electron's EDM as a precision test of the standard model).

I'm not sure there even exists a non colloquial use of the term "a dipole" (electric, magnetic, or otherwise). I guess there sort of is. Although colloquially you can call any object with a non-zero EDM an "electric dipole", that term more specifically refers to a system of two opposing charges, etc. I guess it might be a good idea yo have Magnetic dipole and Electric dipole as articles describing these specific configurations. Dipole should probably be a dab page.TR 11:14, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

I agree that dipole should be a disambiguation. Right now it parrots a grab-bag of different articles (electric dipole, magnetic dipole, dipole antenna, ...) and it would be better to just link to those different articles instead. I also agree that renaming electric dipole moment to electric dipole (with slightly broader scope) and likewise magnetic dipole moment to magnetic dipole would be an improvement. Multipole expansion would benefit a lot from a few examples of monopoles, dipoles, quadrupoles, etc., in different fields, especially with diagrams. For example, the dipole article says what a flow dipole is, which is better than nothing...but the multipole expansion article could say what a flow monopole is AND what a flow dipole is, which would make everything clearer. I can't think of any example where you would want to say what a Dipole XYZ is without also saying what a Monopole/Quadrupole XYZ is.--Steve (talk) 14:11, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

I strongly object to renaming electric dipole moment to electric dipole, etc. Electric dipole moment and magnetic dipole moment are important physical quantities that deserve their own articles. The are important in many fields ranging from chemistry to elementary particle physics. The articles on these quantities should explain why these quantities are important and what they signify. Renaming the articles to "electric dipole" would shift the subject to a much more muddled subject of examples of dipoles. Moreover, in an article called "electric dipole", there would be no room to talk about the role of electric/magnetic dipole moments in elementary particle physics. (Nobody in his right mind would refer to the electron as an electric dipole, even though the standard model predicts that it has an non-zero electric dipole moment)TR 20:21, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

I'll chip in with Timothy Rias on this. Electric dipole moment should not be renamed to electric dipole. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 20:29, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

If Electric dipole moment is not renamed, there should probably be a separate article entitled Electric dipole for sections like Dipole#Electric dipoles that don't fit comfortably within the subject of electric dipole moment. RockMagnetist (talk)

So far there seems to be consensus that there should be a separate article called Magnetic dipole, containing material like that in Magnetic moment#Magnetic dipoles, while the rest of Magnetic moment stands in for Magnetic dipole moment as well. What about Magnetic dipole–dipole interaction - any reason to keep that as a separate article? RockMagnetist (talk) 22:20, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

I think it makes sense that if/when the article Magnetic dipole is created that Magnetic dipole–dipole interaction would naturally get absorbed into that article. The section on Magnetic Dipoles in Magnetic moment already contains the subsection Magnetic moment#Forces between two magnetic dipoles which could be merged with the potential energy description in Magnetic dipole–dipole interaction, while Magnetic dipole–dipole interaction#Dipolar coupling and NMR spectroscopy could be part of an examples section. Punk physicist 19:30, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

References to the Gilbert model

• Force between magnets

• Magnet

• Gilbert Model (disambiguation)

• Electromagnet