User talk:R8R/Archive 6

Million Award

		The Million Award
		For your contributions to bring Lead (estimated annual readership: 1,000,000) to Featured Article status, I hereby present you the Million Award. Congratulations on this rare accomplishment, and thanks for all you do for Wikipedia's readers! Parcly Taxel 03:01, 17 July 2017 (UTC)

Thank you! I forgot about this one.--R8R (talk) 12:56, 17 July 2017 (UTC)

reply to The Gan

Please can you revisit Talk:And you are lynching Negroes/GA2, I've made the changes as I've agreed with all of your points ?

Sagecandor (talk) 20:55, 17 July 2017 (UTC)

All is well. Will promote it shortly.--R8R (talk) 21:53, 17 July 2017 (UTC)

Thank you very much for the review. Might you be interested in reviewing Whataboutism, which I expanded from [1] to [2] ? Sagecandor (talk) 06:19, 18 July 2017 (UTC)

Why, yes, very much so. Whataboutism is unfortunately important in contemporary Russian politics. I'll start a review whenever I have enough spare time, hopefully today.--R8R (talk) 06:32, 18 July 2017 (UTC)

Thank you ! Sagecandor (talk) 06:48, 18 July 2017 (UTC)

Nevermind, review was closed as not listed at this time. Sagecandor (talk) 01:10, 20 July 2017 (UTC)

That's a pity. Let me know when a new review begins.--R8R (talk) 16:16, 20 July 2017 (UTC)

your edit summary

made me laugh way more than I should have. ^_^ Double sharp (talk) 15:43, 22 July 2017 (UTC)

:D --R8R (talk) 20:06, 22 July 2017 (UTC)

Lead scheduled for TFA

This is to let you know that the lead article has been scheduled as today's featured article for 27 August 2017. Please check the article needs no amendments. If you're interested in editing the main page text, you're welcome to do so at Wikipedia:Today's featured article/August 27, 2017. Thanks! Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 17:10, 29 July 2017 (UTC)

@Mike Christie: What a pun (lead article)! Parcly Taxel 18:36, 29 July 2017 (UTC)

<winces>. Congratulations anyway! Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 18:53, 29 July 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for letting me know! I think the blub should be alright given I have written the proposal text myself (shortened the article's lead section, to be exact), but I'll give it another thought someday soon.--R8R (talk) 11:56, 31 July 2017 (UTC)

This edit doesn't bother me, but I don't get the point of either change. "ductility" appears twice in the article. Thoughts? - Dank (push to talk) 20:44, 2 August 2017 (UTC)

Don't have particular feelings for or against the ductility/malleability change. These are related concepts anyway. Thanks for drawing my attention to this, though.--R8R (talk) 23:22, 3 August 2017 (UTC)

Question

Hallo R8R, thank you for your message. You are right, this is a tricky one. I would indeed turn to WP:EU to get a broader discussion on what should be in this map. This topic is not new, but it's good to reach some kind of compromise. Gryffindor (talk) 22:23, 16 August 2017 (UTC)

Your template

Hi. I'm not sure what you were trying to do, but the template you created was blank. Probably best to stick to the sandbox or a subpage in your user space until you've got it figured out. Deb (talk) 13:05, 26 August 2017 (UTC)

Yeah, I guess. If I move it to my user space, will I be able to move it back after it's done?--R8R (talk) 13:08, 26 August 2017 (UTC)

Yes, of course you will. Deb (talk) 13:10, 26 August 2017 (UTC)

Okay then :) --R8R (talk) 13:15, 26 August 2017 (UTC)

@Deb: Mind me asking you for your assistance with moving the templates User:R8R/Template:RGBtoHSV.H, User:R8R/Template:RGBtoHSV.S, User:R8R/Template:RGBtoHSV.V? Tried to do it myself but the system doesn't let me do so (I was afraid that would happen for some reason, which was why I started to build the template right in the main space). The templates execute conversion of a color from the RGB color scheme to the HSV color scheme.--R8R (talk) 14:18, 26 August 2017 (UTC)

Sure, when they are ready, that can be done easily - or should be anyway. Deb (talk) 15:39, 26 August 2017 (UTC)

They're ready and I've tested them. When I try to move any of these, a red box appears saying,

"You do not have permission to move this page, for the following reason:

The page could not be moved: a page of that name already exists, or the name you have chosen is not valid.

Please choose another name, or use Requested moves to ask an administrator to help you with the move.

Do not manually move the article by copying and pasting it; the page history must be moved along with the article text."

Not sure what I could do now except to ask for assistance. (That is, of course, I can read the text and see the suggestion to use the long procedure, but I assumed contacting anyone eligible to do such moves is also a fine option, given this move would not be at all controversial.)--R8R (talk) 15:56, 26 August 2017 (UTC)

Where are you trying to move them to? It's not clear. Deb (talk) 16:08, 26 August 2017 (UTC)

So sorry for the inconvenience. You see, I imagined I'd write a templates called {{HEXtoHSV.H}} etc., and there weren't these templates. I happened, however, to write {{RGBtoHSV.H}} etc., which all have been written by now. My bad; I should be more careful.--R8R (talk) 16:27, 26 August 2017 (UTC)

Okay, I can move it to article space for you, but it just looks blank so I don't see how it can be used. How would you use it? Deb (talk) 19:23, 26 August 2017 (UTC)

There is no longer any need. Someone has written these templates already, and they're already in the main space.

As for how I would use it: these templates need input color coordinates to transform them to coordinates in a different coordinate system. RGB is the one known best by people who use computers; HSV is another popular system (though usually not known to those not especially bound to computers in general). The template page, of course, does not have any input by itself, but it will work if you provide some: {{User:R8R/Template:RGBtoHSV.H|255|127|0}} -> 29.882352941176, for example. (There you have the H coordinate; you get the S and V coordinates basically the same way.) These templates are not meant to be used by end-users, but may be useful in development of various new color schemes.--R8R (talk) 19:32, 26 August 2017 (UTC)

Oh, I see. Well, I'm glad you've found a solution! :-) Deb (talk) 19:37, 26 August 2017 (UTC)

Main page

It is nice to see "Lead" on the main page. Congratulations and thanks again! Axl ¤ [Talk] 08:35, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

Thank you! I, too, am always delighted to see articles about something basic and real-life important in the main page :) --R8R (talk) 09:06, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

Lead article

Hi please be aware that the setting or BC or BCE is to stay as it is in an article. Familiarise yourself with the appropriate policy WP:ERA. There is no suitable era setting for a subject as that is only a matter of opinion. The setting must stay as it was found usable when the article is created.--CouncilConnect (talk) 09:21, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

I think you're overthinking the rules. First of all, it says, "Do not change the established era style in an article unless [emphasis added] there are reasons specific to its content." Also, that same rule says, "BCE and CE are common in some scholarly texts and in certain topic areas." (So this hints generally that BCE/CE seem to be reasonable here.) But most importantly, it was me who undid my own actions. Also, it was suggested to me by a different editor who used that same argument: BCE is more appropriate in a science article (see FAC2).

We could go for a wider discussion but I genuinely don't see the point. Sort of like you switch an article on an English town to BrE, even if it was originally written in AmE, because BrE is more appropriate here, you use BCE in a science article. Common sense tells me this and common sense beats all rules. Do you not agree, actually?

Also, please don't revert after being reverted. See WP:BRD.--R8R (talk) 10:22, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

• I have seen this situation before and it is really best to leave the era convention alone. I can't find the example in the FAC2 discussion but it probably doesn't matter - it sounds strongly as though no actual discussion of the pros and cons took place. Your example of the BrE and AmE is no help here as the policy specifically allows editors to assign a more appropriate spelling convention based on the subject of the article, although it also points to situations when there is no reason for a preference. No such proviso applies to the era convention. My wife (a postgraduate chemist) laughed at the idea that BCE is more appropriate for a science article. It is not any more objective. Common sense tells me that the era convention should be left alone.--CouncilConnect (talk) 14:14, 27 August 2017 (UTC)
  • I have trouble seeing why this is a big issue at all. As a native speaker I don't feel that BC is somehow odd when applied to a science article. (I am not even sure I would find BCE that odd in an article about Christianity, given that the "Common Era" still starts from what was meant to be the birth of Jesus no matter what you call it.) Double sharp (talk) 15:35, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

You can run the "search in text" (Ctrl+F in all major browsers) for "BCE" in the FAC2. Not all discussions have to be hardcore pro and con discussions, as I have seen in my years editing Wiki, mostly because not enough people participate. Though of course such a pro&con discussion (if one hasn't taken place yet) is always welcome to me. I keep thinking BCE is better for scientific articles and BC for historical (Roman or Jewish history at the very least). I realize the analogy with BrE/AmE dichotomy is rather weak but still illustrative: I think this is one small thing among many many that make articles immersive, which is what I am trying to reach in my articles -- not just list the facts like a printed encyclopedia, but make it interesting to read. I have surfed the Internet and seen that many people do think this whole BCE/CE convention is related to science (and, of course, many wouldn't care either way). That, in my opinion, does not make it a killer reason for a change without discussion but makes a strong argument in a discussion.

But actually, I don't understand why you even wanted to change it back now that you say you want to leave the matter alone. You had to actually dig it up in the article history to justify the recent change in the first place. That is a lot more effort than the question deserved at that point, if you ask me and as I see your current position.--R8R (talk) 10:14, 28 August 2017 (UTC)

CouncilConnect was wrong. WP:ERA does not say we use the original style but that we shouldn't change the established style without discussion. Thanks. Doug Weller talk 12:27, 28 November 2017 (UTC)

Graphics Lab

Your request has been completed. If satisfied please place a resolve tag on your request entry here, so we may close it. - FOX 52 (talk) 07:10, 6 September 2017 (UTC)

what's going on with the amount of 5f involvement in the actinide series?

10.1039/C7DT00664K will get you an interesting paper, with a nice summary of some new work on Bk and Cf, plus some frustrated statements about the lack of anything but fundamental knowledge of the elements past Es. ^_^ Double sharp (talk) 06:26, 12 September 2017 (UTC)

how the Russians and the Americans tried to sort out the dispute over 104 and 105 among themselves

Do you have access to this? Double sharp (talk) 10:54, 13 September 2017 (UTC)

It appears to me that this was an oral report during that conference and only its abstract exists in print. This happens during scientific conferences: they do the talking and only print the abstracts, judging from my own experience of participation in such conferences :)

Maybe there is something else to be dug on the matter, though.--R8R (talk) 16:13, 13 September 2017 (UTC)

English grammar

I know that you have always been receptive to - and asked for - input on grammar and cultural matters. So I am wondering how (and whether) you would like me to respond when I see you make obvious English grammar errors in talk page comments. For example, I recently noticed you use "relief", a noun, when I think you meant to use "relieve", a verb. Of course, that could also be a simple typo or spell checker mess-up that a native English speaker could just as easily have made. Anyway, I am content to simply ignore such things (as I've done occasionally in the past), comment separately here (as I've done now), or make a correction in place (which you could revert). I don't want to come off sounding hyper-critical, but if I can be of service to you along these lines, I place myself at your disposal. YBG (talk) 14:47, 22 September 2017 (UTC)

Not at all; thank you very much for submitting!

Regarding that particular typo, I have noticed that I often finalize a thought, "pronounce" it in my head, and then already move on to the next thought, so I am not particularly attentive when writing the finalized idea down. Back when I was working on fluorine with TCO, he once noticed I often misspelled "because" as "bacause." Of course I know how to spell that particular word—this is perhaps one of the most basic English words, not to mention I've never seen it misspelled—but, you know, those two just sound so similar and I unconsciously—because I'm already thinking about something else or at least want to get done with this phrase I'm typing at the moment already—write it out incorrectly because that sort of sounds like just what I've "heard" myself say in my head. Fortunately or not, I make this kind of mistakes in Russian as well.--R8R (talk) 15:03, 22 September 2017 (UTC)

Please do submit anything else you see in the future!--R8R (talk) 15:04, 22 September 2017 (UTC)

Will do. YBG (talk) 23:19, 22 September 2017 (UTC)

IUPAC CIAAW (ref technically)

I understand this edit. If you have any suggestion on how to use & spread that link (speaking ref-technically), please tell me some time. We should keep in mind that having s.a.w. right is difficult, but at least we at enwiki got it right. It's "worse" at Wikidata (the horror, the horror) (crying face here). -DePiep (talk) 19:26, 7 October 2017 (UTC)

It was alright. I only stepped from the template because a template does not allow for formatting variation (in this case, page number ranges). You could introduce additional parameters but then having regular referencing becomes simpler which kills the point of having the template. That was a minor change; don't take it for much at all.--R8R (talk) 19:35, 7 October 2017 (UTC)

Yes. It's just: I'm still thinking about: how can we spread that ref across all situations (instead of pasting literally, as yo had to do). All fine. -DePiep (talk) 19:40, 7 October 2017 (UTC)

I'm not entirely sure what you mean. Perhaps subst: in a template's name is what you're looking for?--R8R (talk) 19:50, 7 October 2017 (UTC)

I meant to say (about using the CIAAW source, as a <ref>): using {{CIAAW2016}} is the right source but it is fixed, limited. So you had to copy/paste it. That is not ideal. My quest is: is there a better way to use that one source all around? No more copy/pasting? -DePiep (talk) 19:57, 7 October 2017 (UTC)

Perhaps I got you right. So if you type {{subst:CIAAW2016}}, you get . Is that not what you want?--R8R (talk) 20:04, 7 October 2017 (UTC)

I want: As the source, everywhere, exactly that IUPAC/CIAAW/Meija source for standard atomic weight. Everywhere. Always. Wikiwide. That's all I want. You did OK in Th. There are some tech detail left, such as: what if reused on a page (using <ref name =""> etc.). Thats just ref-technology, not good sourcing. -DePiep (talk) 20:22, 7 October 2017 (UTC)

References

Thorium history

Do you think the finding of the decay products as new elements is relevant at all? Because while all the others were first discovered as uranium daughters, the first Rn isotope to be found was thoron, when Rutherford and someone else measured the radiation from ThO₂. Seems like it would fit neatly into the story when Th is found to be radioactive, because they found that the radiation that came out of Th was not constant, and that the gas around it retained its radioactivity for a few minutes (not surprising, because thoron has a half-life of about a minute). Double sharp (talk) 02:06, 25 October 2017 (UTC)

Seems interesting but somehow I'm not too interested because this seems to divert us from the main story on thorium. However, perhaps having a medium-length sentence or a note on this would be good if we can make sure this doesn't draw the attention from the main story to it. That is, if we can find a story among the ecisting ones that this fact could compliment. Can we?--R8R (talk) 07:38, 25 October 2017 (UTC)

This is better than I imagined, sice we already write: "Between 1900 and 1903, British physicists Ernest Rutherford and Frederick Soddy showed how thorium decayed at a fixed rate over time into a series of other elements. This observation led to the identification of the half-life as one of the outcomes of the alpha particle experiments that led to their disintegration theory of radioactivity", and their discovery of thoron was in 1899. So what happened was they found the radiation a bit erratic, pinned it down on the gas escaping from it and hence discovered Rn, and in the next four years demonstrated that apart from that effect, the radiation was constant, so that they could develop the theory. Since it fits so well into the existing story, I think we could just add in a little sentence for it. Double sharp (talk) 08:31, 25 October 2017 (UTC)

Sure, then it would be great.--R8R (talk) 12:30, 25 October 2017 (UTC)

Another Oganessian interview

I think you might enjoy reading this. ^_^ Double sharp (talk) 13:33, 4 November 2017 (UTC)

Yes, I did enjoy it very much, thank you. Every time I read an interview of his I can't help but think he is not just a smart, but a genuinely wise person. I feel great respect for him; if someone was to tell me it was this great respect that inspired his colleagues to name an element after him, I'd easily believe that.--R8R (talk) 18:11, 4 November 2017 (UTC)

Your GA nomination of History of aluminium

Hi there, I'm pleased to inform you that I've begun reviewing the article History of aluminium you nominated for GA-status according to the criteria. This process may take up to 7 days. Feel free to contact me with any questions or comments you might have during this period. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Chiswick Chap -- Chiswick Chap (talk) 14:21, 24 November 2017 (UTC)

By the way, access dates are not required for books or journal papers, which already have dates. You may interpret "not required" as "required not" if you prefer! Chiswick Chap (talk) 12:18, 26 November 2017 (UTC)

Thanks. I thought it was an ISBN or a DOI that freed one from having to fill an access date.--R8R (talk) 12:35, 26 November 2017 (UTC)

Well, all books should have an ISBN and all papers should have a DOI or other identifier. By the way, I'd say that images should only be formatted as upright if they naturally appear in portrait format - the effect is to make them about the same size as ordinary landscape images which are not formatted upright. I think we'll need to reposition all the images, too, as they're tangling up the section headings. Chiswick Chap (talk) 12:38, 26 November 2017 (UTC)

That is not always possible. For instance, old enough books never have ISBNs.

According to WP:UPRIGHT, "Where absolutely necessary, a fixed width in pixels (e.g. 17px) may be specified. This, however, ignores the user's base width setting, so upright=scaling factor is preferred whenever possible" (formatting copied from original). However, we may use upright=1.00 rather than upright, which is equivalent to upright=0.75.

I like what you call tangled headers. For a single reason: It is much easier to read when the text actually begins directly under the header, and not right to it, as is the case for left-aligned pictures directly under the title. I am also mirroring that for right-aligned pictures, but that is for visual appeal of symmetry rather than needed.

I think the original caption for the British aluminium war donations was better: "During World War II, the British collected aluminium utensils from households. That aluminium would be melted to make airframes." It makes the point stronger and puts a better emphasis on the caption. I also find the current wording a little strange. Could it be a BrE vs. AmE thing? (I am from neither UK nor U.S. and in fact not from an English-speaking country at all, but I use English on almost daily basis even outside Wikipedia, and almost all of it is AmE.)

Also, we don't need years for every caption. it makes sense for pfennigs because there have been different pfennigs of different marks at different times. The aluminium can design is essentially the same since the late 1990s at least, which is the earliest date I am old enough to remember anything from. Same for the billets, I still expect to see the same cylinders today.--R8R (talk) 13:29, 26 November 2017 (UTC)

I beg to differ on all the above points, but I will insist on only one of them, default image widths for landscape images. Chiswick Chap (talk) 13:33, 26 November 2017 (UTC)

That one is a rule. I'm sure, though, that we can do something to make you fine with |upright= in case of every picture. |upright=1.00 is by default equivalent to |220px. You can try |upright=1.50, |upright=0.60, and so on if you like. By default, that would be equivalent to 1.50*220=330px, 0.60*220=132px, and so on.--R8R (talk) 13:42, 26 November 2017 (UTC)

Glad we agree on something. I also use upright=1.2 etc when necessary. The current image layout is a mess, however. Chiswick Chap (talk) 13:53, 26 November 2017 (UTC)

Do you mean the order of images? If so, how is it a mess?

|upright=1.20 seems a little too big. I don't mind big pictures at all, I am just afraid that'll cause some sandwhiching. Even making them all |upright=1.00 is a little too much given the number of images we use but that we could still handle.--R8R (talk) 14:09, 26 November 2017 (UTC)

Perhaps though you may want to try different scaling factor for horizontal and vertical images. In that case, feel free.--R8R (talk) 14:15, 26 November 2017 (UTC)

No, I didn't and don't intend to scale up any of the images here, though it is common to scale up the first image to a maximum of 1.3. It's also fine to scale down any very long images but that's not a problem here either. I think we're all done. Chiswick Chap (talk) 14:29, 26 November 2017 (UTC)

That is fine with me. Thank you for the review.

I hope you won't mind if I restore the left-right alignment alternation. When pictures follow one another in such a long row, I tend to ignore them altogether. I'll try not to interfere with section headings, however.--R8R (talk) 14:32, 26 November 2017 (UTC)

Your GA nomination of History of aluminium

The article History of aluminium you nominated as a good article has passed ; see Talk:History of aluminium for comments about the article. Well done! If the article has not already been on the main page as an "In the news" or "Did you know" item, you can nominate it to appear in Did you know. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Chiswick Chap -- Chiswick Chap (talk) 14:41, 26 November 2017 (UTC)

Russian perspective on the composition of group 3

Hi R8R

Do Russian authors have any strong views about Sc-Y-La v S-Y-Lu? I presume most, like what happens in the West, are happy enough with Sc-Y-La. Sandbh (talk) 05:42, 28 November 2017 (UTC)

Hardly ever have I seen anyone have a strong position on this one (by that I mean that I cannot recall seeing anyone since I don't know... 1940? argue that either version is preferable). Everyone uses Sc-Y-La, though some recent books that fall under fresh foreign influences such as the 18-column table may use Sc-Y-Lu. The 18-column table is rare (the change is underway albeit slowly, starting with the scientists), but I've never seen a 18-column table with a split d-block.--R8R (talk) 08:29, 28 November 2017 (UTC)

ArbCom 2017 election voter message

Hello, R8R. Voting in the 2017 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23.59 on Sunday, 10 December. All users who registered an account before Saturday, 28 October 2017, made at least 150 mainspace edits before Wednesday, 1 November 2017 and are not currently blocked are eligible to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once.

The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.

If you wish to participate in the 2017 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:42, 3 December 2017 (UTC)

Template:Did you know nominations/Muharem Kurbegovic

Please see note on your DYK review. Yoninah (talk) 22:46, 14 December 2017 (UTC)

History of aluminium

You use the word "alum" in many places to mean, I believe, one particular type of alum, potassium alum which is the potassium double sulfate of aluminium, KAl(SO₄)₂, commonly found in its dodecahydrate form as KAl(SO₄)₂·12H₂O. At the very least, you should wikilink to [[potassium alum|alum]], but it might also be helpful if you let the reader know the answer by giving the chemical formula early on. YBG (talk) 12:26, 20 December 2017 (UTC)

Yes, you are correct. This is a worthy suggestion and I'm inclined to follow. The only problem is that I have to see where to enter this information and how not to break the flow. Certainly the formula is irrelevant in the discussion on the ancient history. I'll think about it when I've got a spare minute.

In the meantime, may I ask you to review thorium at its FAC page? I'd love to have a review from you in particular.--R8R (talk) 12:50, 20 December 2017 (UTC)

According to , "alum" was interchangeably ammonia alum and potash alum for quite some time, and at some times the ammonia kind dominated. Will need time to think how to add this information.--R8R (talk) 17:46, 20 December 2017 (UTC)

The more I look at it, the less I want to separate the potassium kind of alum. Yes, potassium alum is the main alum, but the difference is very subtle so there is little reason to separate it anyway especially how common it is for different kinds to combine as if they were one.--R8R (talk) 19:45, 20 December 2017 (UTC)

Before looking into this, I was somewhat familiar with alum, but totally unaware that alum contained any aluminum, so I followed your link to alum which confused me even more because it said "alum" was a class of compounds rather than a single compound. Only after I'd spent quite a bit of time looking through alum did I look up at the hatnote and discover potassium alum which refers to a single compound which does in fact contain aluminum despite the fact that it isn't mentioned in the name. I'm thinking that someone else might suffer this same confusion. Probably including the chemical formula is a bit of overkill, but I think you get the point.

Alum being a class and not just a single compound brings to mind another topic that you might also be interested in as a WP:ELEM history junkie. I think I've run into other terms that historically referred to a single "don't-quite-know-what-it-is" substance that have since become the name of a class of substances. I can't remember the specific example. And similarly I recently found out that "soap" is not just the specific chemical that I use to wash my hands, but is also technically a class of compounds. Not sure what to make of this, right now it is just a collection of interesting factoids rattling around in my brain.

I can't promise anything about the review - I've got several other irons in the fire - but who knows, I might just. YBG (talk) 02:04, 21 December 2017 (UTC)

No, I genuinely didn't get the point. What I rather want to point at is that we never refer to potassium alum in particular. While alum is a term for multiple compounds, there are potassium alum, ammonium alum, and sodium alum, all very similar chemically. The first two are very interconnected historically. I doubt there is any reason at all to separate the two. This is a very minor detail actually: they are not at all different and both contain aluminum.

Also, I don't think that anyone should have the actual trouble figuring that alum contains aluminum after reading the first three sections in their entirety. Perhaps you missed something?

Good one with soap. We rarely need to separate what exact compound we are talking about: there's too minor a difference anyway. Same here.

Cool. I'll understand if you won't be able to do it but still I hope that you will join the review.--R8R (talk) 08:39, 21 December 2017 (UTC)

Still don't quite follow the early history discussion, but that's probably because all I've done is quickly read it, although I have done that two or three times. Probably my lack of attention.

More words to add to soap and alum: vitriole, earth, salt. YBG (talk) 14:12, 21 December 2017 (UTC)

References

DYK for History of aluminium

On 1 January 2018, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article History of aluminium, which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. The fact was ... that Joseph Stalin asked Franklin D. Roosevelt for aluminum, implying enough of it would bring him victory in World War II? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/History of aluminium. You are welcome to check how many page hits the article got while on the front page (here's how, History of aluminium), and it may be added to the statistics page if the total is over 5,000. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to suggest it on the Did you know talk page.

Alex Shih (talk) 00:04, 1 January 2018 (UTC)

It looks like there was another interesting superheavy conference!

Unfortunately I don't have links to the slides, so the most I can give is this summary (with some linked papers that I should add for nihonium chemistry). Double sharp (talk) 12:19, 8 January 2018 (UTC)

Can't help but note the solution for group 3 in the PT on page 3 is marvelous :)

Thanks for sharing. I'm sorta busy at the moment (sorry, I know that the FAC is on; would you address Edwin's last concern?) but I hope to be able to look at it more closely after I get my relief.--R8R (talk) 12:27, 8 January 2018 (UTC)

You're welcome! I try to look every month to see if something new has happened: I haven't seen much yet, but since the SHE-Factory in Dubna should be ready to begin experiments this year (p. 43), this could change quickly. ^_^ (The first experiment planned is a repeat of ⁴⁸Ca+²⁴³Am to test the systems; then we'll get the new stuff). I'll look at the remaining items on the FAC and try to finish as much of it as I can. Double sharp (talk) 13:59, 8 January 2018 (UTC)

P.S. I love that compromise too. Put La as the symbol, but 71 as the atomic number, and with "..." to account for the rest of the lanthanides: three solutions in one! (^.^) Double sharp (talk) 14:04, 8 January 2018 (UTC)

The last new thing I found: a Russian interview with Oganessian (though somehow the first question was asked in English) – so if you have some spare time you can tell me if he's saying anything new here. ^_^ Double sharp (talk) 14:20, 8 January 2018 (UTC)

Sure, I may listen to it while on my way to somewhere when my cellphone has been repaired. Please ping me if I haven't done that in a few weeks.--R8R (talk) 22:24, 9 January 2018 (UTC)

BTW, looking at the Ts and Og FA's, it strikes me that many of the articles from Md onwards are not all that far from it: they contain everything (or nearly everything) that is known about the elements. The other actinides also have potential and are close to being there. Perhaps we could look at some of those once Th is finished, but I'll focus on that first. (Though I've added a new Armenian stamp honouring the discovery of Og to its article; there was also a new Japanese stamp for Nh, which I'm looking for.) Double sharp (talk) 04:29, 9 January 2018 (UTC)

I easily agree, that was part of the reason why I picked on Db. A good FA needs a good History section, though, I have the feeling that may be the biggest obstacle for many articles from being a star-worthy as of now. If you've got the desire, you could farm bronze stars there. If I ever write another one, it would probably be nihonium, because that element of all has quite a story (apart from Rf maybe, which is essentially same as Db).--R8R (talk) 22:24, 9 January 2018 (UTC)

I agree that among the 7p elements, Nh is the most humanly interesting because of the story (the fakery for Lv and Og might come close, but precisely because it was fakery the drama was more general, on scientific ethics rather than just on one element – remember that that was also the year with Jan Hendrik Schön). Of course, scientifically I think Fl and Og are probably more interesting. ^_^ Over the last year I've expanded the history section of nihonium a great deal and I think there might not be much more left. This is the story as I know it (which might be incomplete)

1. GSI planned to try 113 by Bi+Zn after 1996 discovery of Cn in Pb+Zn (the obvious follow-up), but the rapidly diminishing cross-sections to 112 showed this would probably be impractical;
2. JINR had tried hot fusion for 112 in 1998 and aimed for 114 next for the shell closure (and IIRC the opportunity to use neutron-rich ²⁴⁴Pu); but what they may have seen may actually have been EC from the progenitors ^290,287114 leading to ^290,287113; but this possibility went unrecognised
3. After the initial 114, 116, and 118 experiments, Dubna went in 2003 to fill in the odds 113 and 115 (which you don't need ²⁴⁹Bk for); claim for ^283,284113; 2011 JWP response; attempt to get connexions to known nuclides from ²⁸²113 and confirmations
4. Meanwhile RIKEN had been "testing their strength" by confirming GSI cold-fusion experiments for 108, 110, 111, 112, and then thought to try 113 itself after a failed 2003 GSI attempt and got some atoms; 2011 JWP response; confirmation from ²⁶⁶Bh, attempted confirmation from ²⁷⁴Rg, and long-sought long chain from ²⁷⁸113
5. JWP confirmation of RIKEN results; response from RIKEN and Dubna
6. Naming, naming ceremony, general cultural impact of naming in Japan (hey, the Crown Prince came to the element's christening!)

I think that's about it, though given the two parallel paths to 113 (one from above, one from below), I'm not sure how best to organise it. Almost all of it should be at nihonium already, though. Double sharp (talk) 08:04, 12 January 2018 (UTC)

P.S. I've added the thing I mentioned at the start of this section to the section on experimental chemistry. On a quick look it looks like everything but the second half of #6 is already there, although I think the organisation might be improved somewhat (I'm just not sure how to do it). I also think that the isotopes section should somehow focus more on the general trend which has often been noted in Mt through Nh where the heavier isotopes get exponentially more stable (though what about those neutron-rich unconfirmed ones?), instead of going into detail on each isotope, but then there are only six (plus maybe two more) already and so the trend is just based on a glimpse. I do think it has great potential, though; maybe I'll start a PR for Nh after we're done with Th. Double sharp (talk) 08:17, 12 January 2018 (UTC)

There is one genuinely fascinating (for me) detail that you're missing at the moment: the disappointment of the Russian team for not getting a co-discoverer status. It adds very much to the story if you ask me. If you remind me, I'll later check if they produced any good response in Russian and you probably want to check if there's anything in English on the matter; they promised they'd evaluate the matters closely after the full assignment paper is out.

As I understand, Nihon is more of an informal name. Is there a particular reason why they didn't choose Nippon? Is it because the 1908 name is sort of historical and thus not allowed?

"About six months later, the Japanese results came out." -- I think it would be cool to start the story of the Japanese experiment after this phrase.

Nice to know you're going to get this featured. Count me in for the PR.--R8R (talk) 22:04, 13 January 2018 (UTC)

OK, I've added everything I could find for now. I think the former 1908 claim for "nipponium" was probably a factor, but I can't find an actual source saying this. Nippon is more official as a standalone word, but in combinations it doesn't seem to be so: the language is usually called nihongo, not nippongo (although it's possible). There don't seem to be fixed rules on this, so there are some words where you usually hear Nippon and some where you usually hear Nihon (and then there is both Nipponbashi in Osaka and Nihonbashi in Tokyo, both literally meaning "Japan Bridge"). Double sharp (talk) 07:14, 14 January 2018 (UTC)

I saw an interesting thing from IUPAP titled "President's report to the meeting of the IUPAP Council and Commission Chairs Taipei, 22 and 23 October 2016": I'll link it when I'm off my phone (since it's unhappy to give me the URLs for pdf files). It has some content about the context in which the last four new elements were named (apparently the reason for the early release prior to the JWP reports was that the naming of nihonium had been leaked to the Japanese press), and also some about how future JWPs will work for claims for elements Z ≥ 119 and their consistencies (or lack thereof) with claims previously reviewed for elements Z ≤ 118 by previous JWPs: many are calling for IUPAP to take the main role perhaps to the total exclusion of IUPAC from the important analyses, because the last time discovering and identifying transuranium elements was more chemistry than physics was the discovery of mendelevium all the way back in 1955. (Which, given its name, is rather fitting! ^_^) Double sharp (talk) 11:03, 12 January 2018 (UTC)

OK, here's the link: [3]. Double sharp (talk) 12:45, 12 January 2018 (UTC)

I've always wondered why IUPAC is still in charge. Wonder if IUPAP is up to the task, though. "I have had extensive discussions with Natalia Tarosova, the IUPAC president" -- it is amusing that they even misspelled the name of the IUPAC president, will they manage to process discovery data correctly :)--R8R (talk) 22:04, 13 January 2018 (UTC)

Some lectures I found on YouTube

Oganessian! En'yo (RIKEN)! Matveev (what JINR can do now and is planning)! Double sharp (talk) 06:22, 14 January 2018 (UTC)

Another interesting retrospective paper

The doi is 10.1088/1402-4896/aa53c1 (with Oganessian, Sobiczewski, and Ter-Akopian). It's interesting to see how they seem to predict that advancements in making Es and Fm targets will come first, instead of changing the ⁴⁸Ca beam: "Most likely, the movement further to the heavier nuclei (Z_CN ≥ 119) will be again based, in foreseeable future, on the use of fusion reactions of ⁴⁸Ca with actinide target nuclei" (p. 12). Double sharp (talk) 15:44, 14 January 2018 (UTC)

Infobox data central

re your edit [4] in infobox thorium: Data for |standard atomic weight= now is read from a central location, {{Infobox element/symbol-to-saw}} (and {{CIAAW2016}} is default source, with the correct link). Infobox documentation mentions this, but I hope to make this more clear soon (so many plans, so little time). -DePiep (talk) 15:16, 10 January 2018 (UTC)

sure, but the previous link did not link to CIAAW2016.--R8R (talk) 17:37, 10 January 2018 (UTC)

Thorium FA

I'm very happy indeed that it's finally done, although I was a little bit disappointed not to get EdChem's comments in time (though I know he's been very busy, it would've been pretty awesome to get a chemist's comments). Thank you for all your help (especially at the PR) that allows me to finally brag that I have a bronze star in chemistry (after seven years ^_^).

So, where would you like us to be going next? I'll certainly start the nihonium PR now that we've been talking about it: and yes, I'd also like hassium to get up there next. (And, really, all the superheavies). Among the non-superheavies, I suppose the first priority is finishing aluminium: still, I might want to try what you did on Pb (take an old GA to FA) myself. Maybe tungsten or bismuth? (I'm not quite brave enough to do carbon, even though that's what I really want to do later. Think of it as my nonmetallic counterpart to your aim of gold! ^_^)

In the meantime I'll probably crank out a few GA's at least for the remaining really awful or really close articles, since it does give me some motivation that something is being done. I think arsenic might be an example of the latter and tin might be an example of the former. (And, really, I'm just sick of seeing that yellow island in the p-block, even though it has significantly receded thanks to our efforts.) And no, I haven't forgotten my first project of alkali metal FA; perhaps while deciding what to do with it I'll try to get back into writing a group article first (hmm, halogen?) to understand the slightly different needs. ^_^ Double sharp (talk) 03:25, 20 January 2018 (UTC)

P.S. The nihonium PR has launched! Double sharp (talk) 05:48, 20 January 2018 (UTC)

Yes, I'm glad, too. I hope this will indeed motivate you get more and more subsequent stars and I'm glad to see it's actually working :)

If you go for all superheavies, that's great: that's simple and not really time-consuming and it yields more blue cells in the PTQ. I just don't feel I've got the patience to go there all by myself but since you're into going there, I'll help along if you need it. I want to get this done, too. I'd personally really like you to also get alkali metal finally featured: this is not very difficult at this point but should be very motivating to keep the stars flowing. If you want any help with that, just let me know.

My main agenda is, as of yet, dubnium--history of aluminium--aluminium(--iron--gold), possibly interluded by side things like your superheavies.--R8R (talk) 11:31, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

When moscovium happens, I will be sure to bring you into it. ^_^ Mind you, I don't think I'll do them all in one shot: I didn't GA them all in one shot either. I'd probably do a few, pause and work on a more important element, and then crank a few more out again when I get a mental block on the more important ones. After nihonium, the ones I most want to feature are hassium, copernicium, and flerovium; the others can wait, though I admit that after Nh and Ts, moscovium seems fairly trivial to feature.

I think I'd extend the superheavy spamming attempt to pretty much all the transactinides, since Np through Es all seem to be very close to FA already, and Fm to Lr might as well be superheavy articles.

My main agenda is to first FA nihonium and then step away from the superheavies for a while. ^_^ I will go for the alkali metal FA but after that, but I'd also like to do something you once said: improve someone else's GA to an FA. (I don't think Th really counts, as I wrote it as a GA after all.) So maybe I'll try for lithium FA somewhere along the line as well! Double sharp (talk) 13:59, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

Russian name of tennessine

I'm curious: is there a reason why the Wikipedia article is at Теннессин with the "-ine" suffix, when the five lighter halogens don't have that in Russian (фтор, хлор, бром, иод, астат)? Is everyone just using the English name for it? Searching other European languages gets me fr:Tennesse, de:Tenness, es:Teneso, it:Tennesso, which makes sense on the basis of how they construct the lighter halogen names. Meanwhile I have no idea what Polish Wikipedia is doing with pl:Tennessine, using the English name as well for pl:Nihonium and pl:Moscovium, even though Polish always deletes the final "-ium" ending (that's why they have ind instead of indium, for example).

BTW, I'm curious: if I do end up trying to learn Russian in the future, how much would my rudimentary knowledge of Polish (enough to ask for directions and order food but not much else, if you're curious) help? I know they're both Slavic languages but I'm not sure if they're close enough that it'd really be useful help. Double sharp (talk) 04:09, 20 January 2018 (UTC)

As for the "-ine/-ин" suffix: yes, I think that is absolutely it, this is a rudiment from English. Maybe it has to do with the fact the Russian discoverers were working hand in hand with American discoverers? Maybe it has to do with the fact I personally would find теннесс sounding strange given there is a state called Теннесси. Maybe it just wouldn't sound good in Russian. Maybe that's just me, though. You might want to know that astatine was also initially known as астатин and that had only changed by, give or take, 1970. The Polish must just be falling in line with the general internationalization going on. Speaking of which, I have never heard anyone say the word иод, which is always йод. The change in written language happened because someone felt they needed to go with spellings similar to IUPAC's (I genuinely forgot the story). This change is observed only by chemists, and some of those are not familiar with this regulation as well. Same thing with new elements' names, I guess.

Unfortunately, I don't know Polish so I can't tell. What I can tell, though, is that the Slavic languages are generally said to be close to each other. That is because a thousand years ago, the common Slavic language was still intelligible throughout a great territory and a person from Prague could easily understand and be understood by a person from Belgrade. (When the Byzantines were preparing to convert the Rus to Christianity, they invented a written language for them so there would be a language to translate the Bible to. They based their new language on the Slavic dialect from around the Byzantine lands: the Southern dialect, as opposed to the Eastern dialect spoken by the Rus; we now know the said language as Old Church Slavonic. As you can see, this went more or less fine, Christianity gained ground in the lands of the Rus and initially people, despite the differences between the written Old Church Slavonic and spoken Old Russian, often could not even tell that there were two different languages -- that's how you see they're similar.) I presume you should find enough grammatical similarities there. Personally, I have difficulties even understand spoken Ukrainian (as it is spoken in the western parts of Ukraine; the eastern parts mostly use Russian anyway) but clear Ukrainian, especially if used without the modern loanwords, would be understandable to me and I believe I would find learning it very easy if I wanted to, because the difference is mainly in the vocabulary. Even Polish, when pronounced clearly, is partly understandable. (By the way, you may know about the historical rivalry between the Poles and the Rus/Russians, and the affinity of Polish to sibilant sounds sometimes prompted some Russians to tease the Poles about it.) I know that of the major Slavic languages, Russian is perhaps the most complex due to a number of exceptions popping up here and there, but apart from that and having to learn new words, you should be fine.--R8R (talk) 12:05, 20 January 2018 (UTC)

Looking at Russian grammar, quite a bit of it does look familiar, although I imagine there would be some differences down the line. (Though I'd note that my Polish knowledge came mostly from some self-study and about a month spent in Poland cumulatively, and I am most definitely not fluent in it.)

Your statement that Polish is "partly understandable" makes me curious, so: справдьмы то! Чи умеш читать по польску, кеды пише в цырылицы? ^_^ (Sorry for any grammar mistakes. I haven't tried using it in over two years now. I also Cyrillicised the Polish, to account for it being spoken rather than written Polish.) Double sharp (talk) 12:50, 20 January 2018 (UTC)

Yes, I, too, think there should be some differences (they are different subgroups of the Slavic family, Western Slavic and Eastern Slavic, for some reason?) but not all too much.

Yes, I can. I could even read it in the Latin script; I imagine you could've figured I have some general grasp of it by now :) I couldn't perhaps write in Polish due to their complicated spellings (may I show you this humoresque -- I certainly would be just as puzzled) but reading is a far simpler business.--R8R (talk) 13:04, 20 January 2018 (UTC)

Yeah, I did the Cyrillicisation mostly because of the singular Polish spelling that no other Slavic language follows, but it's interesting and cool to see that it doesn't impede understanding. I wonder what it would look like in Russian? ^_^

BTW, I've seen your clip before. I understood what you meant by "humoresque", but it sounds a bit odd to me: Wiktionary, at least, says that it's only used of music. I'd probably have called it a sketch, although it does come from a full-length comedy movie. Double sharp (talk) 13:39, 20 January 2018 (UTC)

That would be "Да неужели! Умеешь ли ты читать по-польски, когда [я] пишу на кириллице?" This is a raw translation from what you wrote in Polish; it doesn't sound well constructed in Russian. IRL I would say something like "Да неужели! Сможешь ли ты читать на польском, записанном на кириллице?" (tell me if yoг want me to explain the differences).

I guessed so too (I had in fact checked a dictionary before writing that) but I found no good word to describe the clip. I didn't use "sketch" exactly because the decorations seemed too good for it just being a sketch.

As for complicated spellings for some sounds: it's easy enough to notice some trend and it's okay to start from there. The German spelling for "щ" is "schtsch": that's seven letters for one! But once you realize there's nothing in German to make "щ" so they go with the closest approximation, which they found to be "шч" (which is a good approximation), then it's all good. This realization was a great starting point to my current understanding of various polygraphs in European Latin-based languages.--R8R (talk) 11:25, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

Yes, please do explain the differences! ^_^ As for the polygraphs, this is (I think) the reason for one statement from the Polish-Cyrillicisation webpage I linked to: "Latin orthographies of Slavic languages always have one of the following two disadvantages: either they are full of diacritical marks, or they look horribly like English or another Western language." Double sharp (talk) 13:31, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

The difference between уметь and мочь is that the former is concerned with your general skills, while мочь is more of a applied version of the same. For example, consider the phrase "I can speak English": я умею говорить по-английски hints that you have that skill in general, while я могу говорить по-английски can also mean that but usually rather hints at the fact you can do it right now or when needed. The difference between уметь and мочь is not at all great when you mean the latter but may be a little confusing when you mean the former. The difference between уметь and мочь on one side and суметь and смочь on the other is that the former two are of the "imperfect type," while the latter are of the "perfect type." That means that the former are again sort of more general meaning than the latter, which are rather concern with specific facts, and the latter facts hints at that these actions are finite and have their definite ends. This parallels the difference between the simple and perfect tenses in English because hey, English and Russian are distant relatives. So умеешь means "[you] can (in general)", while сможешь means "[you] will be able to." By the way, while Russian has an equivalent of the English past perfect and future perfect tenses, there is no present perfect tense.

"по-польски" and "на польском [языке]" are more or less equivalent in this context. The difference in general is that the former is a noun (substituted with an adjective; this may sound complex but you can also do this with languages in English: "I speak English [language]" is also fine) while the latter is an abverb: you can say книга на польском (book in Polish) but not книга по-польски (??), but you can say котлета по-киевски (Chicken Kiev; i.e., cooked like they do in Kiev) but you can't say котлета на киевском (??). I used the latter form to get along with grammar: I used a participal phrase, which needs a noun to be subjected to. Another option (more common to spoken rather than written speech) would be to use a dependent clause, but it would still need на польском.--R8R (talk) 14:33, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

Very interesting! Thank you for the explanation; no doubt when I actually do get the time to learn Russian the memory of this will be very helpful! Double sharp (talk) 14:50, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

About the internationalisation: it seems to be just that the Polish names have to be officially selected by the Polish Chemical Society. I mean, that's what the note on the pl:Nihonium article says: "Nazwa w języku angielskim z uwagi na brak polskiego odpowiednika zatwierdzonego przez Polskie Towarzystwo Chemiczne" (for the talk-page stalkers: "name [given] in English due to the lack of a Polish equivalent approved by the Polish Chemical Society"). For instance, here's their official document announcing Polish names for Fl and Lv. Mind you, Gazeta Wyborcza had no problem simply writing nihon, moskow, tenes, and oganeson. I must also wonder what exactly the Polish Chemical Society is doing if the names really haven't yet come out: the German, French, Spanish, and Chinese chemical societies all decided on localised names in 2017. (Actually the Chinese is the most irritating from a computer perspective; the usual solution is to make new characters for new elements, which presents a problem because these new characters are almost always not already in Unicode and so they can't be used on the Internet yet.) Has the Russian Chemical Society said anything about names? (I don't think so, but I think you could check it more easily than I could.)

P.S. Having tried it out and delightfully realising I remember more than I think I do, I think I might dare to raise my Babel box to pl-2. It's certainly much better than I can come up with stumbling through Japanese. So now I'm not so scared of Russian when I finally get enough time to tackle it. ^_^ Double sharp (talk) 16:18, 20 January 2018 (UTC)

(For the sake of completeness, when reading that Polish phrase, I found myself puzzled a couple of times, checked your translation, checked back the original phrase, and thought, "oh yeah, makes sense"; in the end, without a dictionary, only "odpowiednik" seemed strange.)

No, looks like Russian Chemical Society got nothing; at least, I looked for it and found nothing. I sort of think that JINR is in fact in charge anyway; they actually discover this stuff and so they use the names plainly translated from English, which they surely consider all along; nobody else works with it anyway so nobody has any reasons to confront the most obvious names anyway. Maybe in 30 years, if someone actually writes enough on these elements, they'll get rid of the -ин ending if they actually think теннесс sounds better. 113, 115, and 118 have seemingly nothing to oppose in the first place.

Oooh, thanks for sharing that Chinese problem. I never knew how the Chinese hieroglyph building worked with computers; makes perfect sense when I've actually come to think of it. As for the Chinese, luckily not too many are affected and the new characters should appear soon.

If you go for it, best of luck! Please feel free to ask questions here and there.--R8R (talk) 11:11, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

Yeah, I think the discoverers should get the most weight in their native languages, though it'd be nice to have something official. (Of course there is the possibility of an official pronouncement that no one actually pays attention to, like the iodine example you mentioned above.)

The way you input Chinese characters onto the computer is to type in the Romanisation, and then a list of characters with that pronunciation comes up. You need to resolve the ambiguities by inputting a few syllables before converting them to characters (after all, if you give a single syllable I have no idea which of the many possible characters pronounced that way you mean, but no one has any problem understanding spoken Chinese, proving that all these ambiguities are resolved effectively by the context). And yes, each character has its own Unicode codepoint, so that when a new one is invented it needs to be included in the next version. Thankfully this only happens very rarely, and mostly for scientific terms (most of these are for new elements now, the other chemical names having already been covered by 20th-century coinages).

Thank you for the good wishes! If I go for it, I will certainly not hesitate to ask you questions. Double sharp (talk) 13:31, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

Very interesting presentation with a large nuclide chart prediction to Z = 175 and N = 330

Here it is!

Incidentally, this Chemistry Stack Exchange answer (where I got this link from) notes that I seem to have been right that the drip lines intersect, only that it's not the proton and neutron drip lines (which in hindsight was blindingly obvious), but it's the line of immediate spontaneous fission (which if you went by the liquid drop model would have been at Z²/A around 50, but shell effects postpone that problem to around 102). Once this line hits the neutron drip line there are no more bound nuclei and we come to the end of the nuclide chart around Z < 600 and N < 3000.

Of course, this Stack Exchange answer is not a reliable source to cite (though the KUTY model in the first link is); and also of course, the electron shells start causing problems significantly before you get to atomic numbers in the 500s. But it seems to be reasonable to look forward to a complete eighth period, even though I think neither of us are going to see it. Double sharp (talk) 14:02, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

Actually, I don't think we even need that answer, because slide 16 of the presentation says "Spontaneous-fissioning nuclei is the border in the neutron-deficient side. T_sf=10^-9 s line and neutron-drip line crosses near N ≈ 340(cf. fissility line). Islands of stability corresponding N = 228, 308, Z=164 magicity appear." Extrapolating from the graph, then, even if there was no problem with elements past 173, we would still be doomed past around 200 protons (maybe 204 for the closed proton shell?). Double sharp (talk) 14:23, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

That's a bit too much to say, though. If we extrapolated what data we had on activities, there wouldn't even be element 114, as it was once thought, not to mention an island of stability in that region at all, and the scientists seem to avoid a claim that bold.

Great links. I am willing to go Socrates on these and humbly avoid having an opinion on questions I don't feel I am well-educated enough to have one. I don't even have particular hopes at all; my only hope is that we the humanity uncover whatever secrets the nature has for us. I sort of think these are defined already and all hopes are pointless (I know why people have hopes in that respect and why this isn't a great response but this feeling prevails in me, so yeah, no hoping as there seems to be no point in that. I hope I am not too much of a bummer. I don't mean to be a killjoy). But thank you for sharing. I'll certainly take this into account.--R8R (talk) 20:38, 20 February 2018 (UTC)

Yeah, I hope we get the technology to find out (which of course means lots more new elements). Didn't Pyykkö say something like "half of chemistry is still undiscovered" about his extended table to element 172? I'd feel reasonably safe in saying that the nuclide chart must end somewhere on the strength of this but not in saying anything more than that: I agree that even those little extrapolations are saying too much for anything more than fun. Double sharp (talk) 23:56, 20 February 2018 (UTC)

Another Oganessian interview in Russian

I'd love for you to listen to this if you have some time and tell me anything cool he says in it! ^_^ Double sharp (talk) 05:49, 4 February 2018 (UTC)

P.S. Looking at the slides this is probably about the same as the one he presented at ORNL in January 2017, but I thought you might be interested in seeing it anyway. ^_^ Double sharp (talk) 05:58, 4 February 2018 (UTC)

Well, there have been a few minor cool points but nothing really significant. I was rather looking for info on future work and there's little of that there.--R8R (talk) 16:46, 4 February 2018 (UTC)

Well, even the minor cool points would be helpful. ^_^ I've also been looking around without much success, save for a few points (the first reaction used to test the new SHE-factory will be ²⁴³Am+⁴⁸Ca; RIKEN started trying ²⁴⁸Cm+⁵¹V last December; and there are also plans to try ²⁴¹Am+⁴⁸Ca and ^249–251Cf+⁴⁸Ca at Dubna, but that's old news). I suspect we won't hear much for a while about plans and instead we'll hear more about recent results; after all, I did just add a very recent (January 2018) paper to flerovium and isotopes of flerovium on a 2017 retry of ²⁴⁰Pu+⁴⁸Ca, and while the JINR had said on their website that they were going to repeat that, we didn't have any knowledge in advance when they were going to do it. ^_^ So in the meantime I just search publications by the main researchers every now and then. Double sharp (talk) 23:48, 4 February 2018 (UTC)

P.S. It seems there was such an attempt to provide a log for what was going on at the JINR, but the last entry was from 2016. Admittedly that was about the ²⁴⁰Pu+⁴⁸Ca reaction rerun whose results were published in January 2018, so presumably it is up-to-date and it's just that the gap between plans and their execution is quite wide. Double sharp (talk) 02:33, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

Don't be mistaken; I meant "cool" as in "cool story, even though not at all influential." He really doesn't go beyond a simple mention.--R8R (talk) 15:58, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

Oh, I see. Well, I'll guess we'll have to wait a bit longer for the syntheses of ²⁹⁵Og and ²⁹⁶Og at least. (I'm still really curious to see if the data for the former ends up agreeing with the fragmentary possible ²⁹⁹120 decay chain observed at GSI way back in 2011.) Double sharp (talk) 06:29, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

decibel (dB)

Well, dB is like Db. I like your contributions. To me, enWP:ELEMENTS is the nicest wikiplace to work. - DePiep (talk) 00:01, 3 March 2018 (UTC)

I guess nothing could be done about that, so we'll leave that inconvenience be. Thank you for your kind words; they genuinely please me. I find joy in writing good readable articles and I am fond to think people like to read them.--R8R (talk) 12:30, 3 March 2018 (UTC)

Oh, and I, too, like the little Project of ours very much and I'm glad to know you share this feeling. If only I did not forget to comment on the most important issues more often. We still have that nonlethal merge to finalize, at the very least.--R8R (talk) 12:26, 4 March 2018 (UTC)

Possible production of superheavy nuclides in actinide transfer reactions (²³⁸U + ²³²Th)

I remember this was suggested in Zagrebaev et al.'s papers, and this 2018 paper on the arXiv certainly suggests positive experimental results: "The data in Figure 6 indicate the observation of a number of previously unreported alpha emitters with energies reaching as high as 11.5 MeV. Given the multi-nucleon transfer mechanism in play many of these are expected to be previously unseen neutron rich products. The raw comparison between data and predictions in the millisecond and second time-ranges shows α-particle energies which might represent decay from very high Z isotopes. However, we must recognize that alpha-particles emitted from new isomeric states can have energies quite different from those of their ground state counterparts and thus would lead to a different t_1/2 energy correlation. This is well established in the Fr-At region, for example [63]." Double sharp (talk) 07:43, 28 March 2018 (UTC)

My, my, that's very interesting! I'd love to read it now except I am currently unfortunately short on time. But I'd really want to learn more about it. I hope I'll read the paper shortly.--R8R (talk) 08:25, 28 March 2018 (UTC)

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Dubnium FA

	The Chemistry Bond Star
	Congratulations! Can we now expect history of aluminium and aluminium itself in the near future? ^_-☆ Double sharp (talk) 16:04, 21 April 2018 (UTC)

And before that, of course, a restart to the nihonium PR! ^_-☆ Double sharp (talk) 16:20, 21 April 2018 (UTC)

Thank you very much! Yes, I was even about to start off the history of aluminium FAC but then I remembered I had asked John to copyedit the article; I want him to finish first. As for aluminium, it's not going to be very soon (I will only be able to really immerse myself in working on it in June at the earliest) but it will definitely follow.

Your PR is the highest priority for me now. I don't think I can do much now with history of aluminium while I have yet to complete the review there.--R8R (talk) 16:52, 21 April 2018 (UTC)

Thanks! BTW, do you have any ideas for a potential TFA date in the near future? The first report was April 1968, so it's a 50th anniversary. ^_^ Double sharp (talk) 13:42, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for reminding me, I completely forgot about TFA. I don't know, really. The first report did not get approved, so eh, if I wanted to reference an anniversary of a report, I'd rather wait for the 50th anniversary of the LBL report. Or we can still do it now, now's an April so an anniversary is now, except it's not a round anniversary :) But I think it's not all that important for chemical elements. Well, maybe neptunium could get a anniversary, that was the first element to be synthesized artificially, that is a big deal. But overall, I think there is no really strong connection between an element and a date. (I'm doubting my own words as I'm writing this but then I considered just deleting them and agreeing with you, and that caused me even greater doubt. I recall, however, that this reasoning didn't go well when we wanted to schedule a TFA for F to an anniversary of Moissan's discovery, the date-related request was shifted to the general category exactly for this reason. Maybe I'm just influenced by that accident? Not sure.)--R8R (talk) 16:45, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

I think we should run a TFA later. Our previous TFA ran on March 5 and now there's an almost approved candidate article on some molecule. Maybe this summer, even June already would be fine, if you do me the courtesy to remind about it.--R8R (talk) 17:28, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

New periodic table colors

I have "cleaned up" some of your PT-color pages. No content (color) changes, to improve overview and ease of editing for you.

• User:R8R/Template:element color: removed those awkward plural-issues ("noble gase" ?!). The list now has the singulars (spaces and --hyphens removed).

| alkalimetal = #{{HSVtoHEX|140|0.27|0.97}}

If you want to use plurals too (out main PT's have those, as does main {{Element color}}), then add it in form:

| alkalimetal | alkalimetals = #{{HSVtoHEX|140|0.27|0.97}}

Unrecognised color names will return black (to signal an error).

• In the documentation page, I have listed the calculated RGB numbers (I needed them anyway).
• In User:R8R/PT search for colors, I have changes those bad plurals ("noble gas" is OK). I see no errors.

Okay, thank you. I have found a few errors but fixed them.--R8R (talk) 17:03, 24 April 2018 (UTC)

• The analysis of your latest colors set: see User:DePiep/PTCC/newcolors#R8R-2017.

The SoM contrast check table shows: still some four w3c conformances are missed. Possibly these could be solved by playing with the colors (darker grey=unk; and with red/blue?).

Personally, I like the darker red for gases because it improves contrast (a lot). See my tests of the old 2013 set in User:DePiep/PTCC/2013#Analysis_&_issues (hope you can keep the overview ;-) ).

The blue for liquids though is less interesting, because it confuses with the wikilink-blue.

Note you've got the wrong color for noble gases. You're looking for 2noblegas there, which is green--R8R (talk) 15:38, 24 April 2018 (UTC)Nevermind that, I will just get rid of the old 10-category table--R8R (talk) 15:59, 24 April 2018 (UTC)

Done. I have also updated the page in general. I haven't realized that I forgot to check for those three contrasts. I have updated my own contrast page. Will eventually solve this problem.--R8R (talk) 17:03, 24 April 2018 (UTC)

As for blue, I just found that green is very difficult to get contrast from. I tried to make it bright blue so there is difference, though. Remember the current color set does not recognize the constraints we put ourselves subject to. I did, however, hope this would be only an interim requirement and all state of matter colors will go away anyway, but in the meantime, here's a color that works.--R8R (talk) 18:41, 24 April 2018 (UTC)

• My take: apart from the Reactive nonmetal change (expected soon), I am also thinking of pushing this change: improve upon the 2013 SoM colors: see 2013 update 2018|here (it uses your red color). This reduces the none-confomances from nine [2013] to six [2013update2018]!, without changing any background color! (low-impact)

To improve contrasts even more, we must change the bg colors of categories AM, AN, PTM. Maybe we can find a low-impact emergency-solution later on (before we dive into the Big Overall Improvement). - DePiep (talk) 12:54, 24 April 2018 (UTC)

I want to eliminate the state of matter colors in the first place for a reason completely unrelated to our current search for better colors. I hope to find your support in my today's proposal at WT:ELEM. If this does happen, it will not only be good substantially, but will also give us more freedom in out search for colors.--R8R (talk) 17:03, 24 April 2018 (UTC)

Yes, interesting point being abstract. Will take a look. (Would make most contast checks moot, but for black and wikilink-blue btw). -DePiep (talk) 17:17, 24 April 2018 (UTC)

First goal was to make these colors more easy to handle for your, overview & ease of editing. Second goal: raise interest in the contrast-rule (~solved then ...). - DePiep (talk) 17:20, 24 April 2018 (UTC)

On an unrelated note, do you still have my 2016 color set? I still think it was a decent attempt and it passed the contrast tests, so it would be good to have it around. I saw it in your user space just a few days ago.--R8R (talk) 17:33, 24 April 2018 (UTC)

Recreated User:DePiep/PTCC/set/R8R-2016. Data was available in User:DePiep/PTCC/set/R8R-2017, I took the version of this month not August 2017. (hiostory was saved because I re-used the page for 2017 that page after a move). Note the categories used. I don't have the testing PT.

A contrast test is at User:DePiep/PTCC/newcolors#R8R-2016 (needs check for correct input & color names used)

Sure contrast checks are mostly OK, easily because the colors area very light (the downside is: hard to connect a color with a legend cell: an essential).

In the near future we'll have to organise all the variant sets, to keep overview. Can become messy quite easily.

Note: the Big redesign will have to start with new colors. Especially since we should look at colorblindness (this will require *different* lightness'es for example). I am reading Colorbrewer (Cymthia Brewer, this source I mentioned in WT:ELEM). So I don't expect we can finish it with a gentle rainbow-spread of colors. - DePiep (talk) 19:10, 24 April 2018 (UTC)

TFA

This is to let you know that the Dubnium article has been scheduled as today's featured article for June 3, 2018. Please check the article needs no amendments. If you're interested in editing the main page text, you're welcome to do so at Wikipedia:Today's featured article/June 3, 2018.--Wehwalt (talk) 19:23, 8 May 2018 (UTC)

Thank you for the notification. I've been watching the article and I am absolutely confident nothing bad happened since the FAC. I've amended the main page text to emphasize the contest between the two laboratories. I wouldn't mind if anyone checked my edits.--R8R (talk) 16:05, 10 May 2018 (UTC)

On the r-process yield of superheavy elements

Here are two new papers on this. Double sharp (talk) 16:50, 16 June 2018 (UTC)

P.S. My amount of spare time seems to be going back up, so we should soon be working together again on aluminium once the Nh FAC is done. And re-opening all those on-hold discussions at WT:ELEM, of course. ^_^ Double sharp (talk) 16:52, 16 June 2018 (UTC)

Thank you, I'll most probably read them tonight.

That's great to know! Before you get to that, though, please don't forget to take a look at hassium. That shouldn't take much time, I think.--R8R (talk) 19:10, 16 June 2018 (UTC)

I've just read the papers. Thank you very much, they've made a very interesting midnight reading!--R8R (talk) 21:27, 16 June 2018 (UTC)

Nihonium FAC

We're almost there, but there have been a few comments in the source review that need to be taken care of; I'm currently short on time, so if you could help me on some of them I would really appreciate it. ^_^ Double sharp (talk) 23:56, 2 September 2018 (UTC)

Of course, I'll be glad to do so. If I find some spare time on Tuesday or Wednesday, which I probably will, I'll do my best to get you closer to the well-deserved bronze star.--R8R (talk) 11:59, 3 September 2018 (UTC)

Thank you so much! Double sharp (talk) 15:15, 4 September 2018 (UTC)

Thank you again for finishing the job! I was going to work on the last items today, but I see you've already done them. I'll definitely try my best to make it up to you next time. ^_^ Double sharp (talk) 14:57, 5 September 2018 (UTC)

No problem, really. Would check after my edits, though? I have asked for more input from Nikkimaria a couple times, so I have the feeling some more input is needed from us.--R8R (talk) 15:54, 5 September 2018 (UTC)

I was going to correct some more things today, but it looks like we made it! ^_^ Double sharp (talk) 15:21, 9 September 2018 (UTC)

Yeah, we did it! My sincerest congratulations to you! I'm going to start the History of aluminium FAC tonight or maybe (if I forget to do it today) tomorrow. By the way, can you estimate when you will be able to ensure that Hassium#Experimental chemistry is up to date so we can start the FAC for that article as well?--R8R (talk) 17:43, 9 September 2018 (UTC)

Thanks! I'll try to give History of aluminium a review soon. I should be able to get hassium done soon too – I just need a spare hour or so to pop up so that I can do the research, and then we'll be in business. ^_^ Double sharp (talk) 15:41, 10 September 2018 (UTC)

Astatine sublimation

Hello, I noticed the vague statement in the article:

half of a given quantity of astatine will vaporize in approximately an hour if put on a clean glass surface at room temperature

I see 2 problems with this statement:

• It isn't specified how much space there is above the glass surface and what the space is filled with - in this case I suppose it's to a good enough approximation infinite vacuum so that no astatine molecule or atom finds its way back from the vapor to the glass surface. That should be made clearer in the article.
• It isn't specified how thick the layer is. Is it meant to be monoatomic?

I come to your talk page because you seem to have made the original contribution a few years ago. Icek~enwiki (talk) 18:23, 18 November 2018 (UTC)

Hello. Here's the quote from book I referred to:

The volatility is usually high from clean surfaces. The vaporization from clean glass surfaces at room temperature can be approximately described as an exponential curve with a half-vaporization period of about 1 hr. The volatility from gold, silver, of [sic] platinum surfaces is appreciably lower ; the half-vaporization period is as high as 16 hr.

At least that's what the English translation says and I only have Google Books snippets of it. I do, however, have the Russian original and am sad to announce to doesn't say much more (it mentions that elemental astatine is very volatile and that's exploited in distillation of At from Bi targets).

I'm afraid we don't have much choice on information on astatine, so this will have to do. If the original researchers found these results decent enough to be published (when they are unsure about something, they make a remark on that, I've seen that in this book; there is no remark here), they must be good enough for us.--R8R (talk) 18:45, 18 November 2018 (UTC)

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direct mass measurement of ²⁸⁸Mc and ²⁸⁴Nh!

News article. Double sharp (talk) 09:49, 23 November 2018 (UTC)

Paper (in press). Double sharp (talk) 09:54, 23 November 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for sharing. It's a shame the article is not available yet. I wonder if the scientists made any, even if preliminary, suggestions on what their data shows the nuclei could look like.--R8R (talk) 04:01, 24 November 2018 (UTC)

Four Award

		Four Award
		Congratulations! You have been awarded the Four Award for your work from beginning to end on History of aluminium. « Gonzo fan2007 (talk) @ 16:53, 30 November 2018 (UTC)

Cyrillic

If you haven't already, could you please check this edit? Thanks! YBG (talk) 00:02, 15 December 2018 (UTC)

Not R8R, and not a Russian speaker, but I know enough to say that this is simply a result of the 1918 spelling reform of Russian (which among other things abolished the letter і, replacing it with и in all occurrences). Mendeleev would have written экаборъ, экаалюминій, and экасилицій in pre-reform orthography, whereas today these would be written экабор, экаалюминий, and экасилиций. So I have reverted the IP's edit as it changed only two of the three to the current spelling. I am not sure if it is worth matching what Mendeleev wrote exactly, so I would support either leaving it as it is or changing all three to the current spelling (though I think R8R is much better-placed to make the call, of course). Double sharp (talk) 03:09, 15 December 2018 (UTC)

Ta! YBG (talk) 12:55, 15 December 2018 (UTC)

Thank you. Indeed, Double sharp was entirely correct both in actions and in reasoning.--R8R (talk) 15:39, 15 December 2018 (UTC)

@Double sharp: also I remember learning that you are not supposed to italicize Cyrillic text in the context of the English language because italicization is supposed to make the italicized text stand out---but the Cyrillic letters are different and that text stands out anyway, so italicization is considered excessive. This is also why {{lang}} works in such a way that {{lang|de|Topf}} is italicized: Topf, whereas {{lang|ru|кастрюля}} is not: кастрюля. (I'm sharing this rather than patronizing, thinking you may find this interesting.)--R8R (talk) 16:00, 15 December 2018 (UTC)

@R8R: Oh, I didn't know that; thanks for the information! I've unitalicised the Russian words in my comment above (they were already unitalicised in Mendeleev's predicted elements).

BTW, I notice Mendeleev uses силиций for silicon, while I understand the current name is кремний from Russian Wikipedia. Their article (at least what I can make out of it through Google Translate) appears to say that Germain Henri Hess introduced the latter name in 1834, but Mendeleev's table postdates that. How long did it take for the name to change? Double sharp (talk) 16:29, 15 December 2018 (UTC)

Interesting. It looks like words like кремний were common even before the name of the element took that particular shape, with кремнезём dating back to 1810. Кремень is a very old Slavic word meaning "flint"; in case you're curious, the -зём part refers to earths (the Earth, an earth, or just earth are all called земля or Земля if you're talking about the planet). So it is not entirely clear why ekasilicon was called экасилиций. Maybe the reason is that you pronounce Si in a chemical formula as силициум (referring to the Latin name of the element).

Fun fact: the Silicon Valley in California is often called Силиконовая долина rather than Кремниевая. See ru:Силиконовая долина.--R8R (talk) 18:08, 15 December 2018 (UTC)

(Very late, but still): Interesting! I knew of this Slavic word; in Polish silicon is called krzem, which is fairly obviously related (in Polish, palatalised r developed into rz, once pronounced like Czech ř, but now pronounced just like ż = ž = ж; except here it is like sz = š = ш because it is in a cluster with voiceless /k/ and that causes it to be devoiced). It matches the fact that silex means flint in Latin as well. Finnish also uses a similar calque: pii means silicon and piikivi means flint.

FWIW, in Polish, Silicon Valley is pl:Dolina Krzemowa. (In Polish, the adjective follows the noun when you talk about something specific, so the adjective limits the meaning and maybe defines a new idea: pl:Układ Słoneczny "Solar System" is another example. To a first approximation: having only a pl-2 Babel box I do not claim to understand higher-order approximations. ^_^) This uses the native word for the element. BTW, could you explain what you mean by pronouncing Si in a chemical formula? In English we just pronounce SiO₂ by reading out individual letters, and the formula name in Russian Wikipedia is ru:Диоксид кремния with the Slavic root, similar to Polish pl:Ditlenek krzemu. I see Russian uses the Greek word for oxygen when speaking of oxides, while Polish uses its own native word tlen for the element even here. (*)

(*) There is a story here: Russian uses кислород as a calque (direct translation) of "oxygen". Jędrzej Śniadecki (according to Wiktionary) originally named it kwasoród in Polish (same idea), but this was replaced (again according to Wiktionary) by pl:Jan Oczapowski's coinage tlen, from tleć ("to smoulder"; in Russian you have this word as тлеть as expected from sound changes, as palatalised ть and дь in Russian correspond to Polish ć and dź ~ ць and дзь; since there was a yat there, I suppose the relevant article on the sound change is here). There are a few other interesting Polish element names like wapń "calcium" and glin "aluminium". The first is from wapień "limestone", the second from glina "clay". Double sharp (talk) 21:38, 8 October 2019 (UTC)

P.S. It looks like for the most part the names for these common elements have a story. Sometimes there are even similar multiple versions. If Google Translate is reading their article correctly, Lithuanian at some point also had the calques rūgštygamis, rūgštadaris (maybe these were suggested at the same time as Jablonskis'?) but now uses Jonas Jablonskis' word deguonis from degimas (looks from interwikis of lt:Degimas to mean something like "to burn"). Well, it seems the Poles and Lithuanians at least have corrected one half of the little scientific error in the namings of H and O. ^_^ Polish seems to have it only half right (pl:wodór must surely have some relation to pl:woda; it looks quite like ru:Водород too); I wonder if Lithuanian lt:vandenilis for H is more etymologically correct? (But I don't understand anywhere near enough of their language to know if it is.) So, any Polish- and/or Lithuanian-speaking talk page stalkers are welcome to correct me on anything here and explain to me what is going on with the names for hydrogen. ^_^ Double sharp (talk) 21:53, 8 October 2019 (UTC)

P.P.S. This is why I once suggested having list of elements in different languages just like we have list of numbers in different languages. ^_^ A rather more daunting task, evidently (118 vs 20)! Double sharp (talk) 07:24, 9 October 2019 (UTC)

When reading chemical formulas, we pronounce H, C, N, O, P, S as letters (аш, цэ, эн, о, пэ, эс); other elements are pronounced as Russian names (натрий, калий, кальций...) or as Latin names when they are substantially different from Russian ones (купрум, аурум, феррум...). Si is силициум but sometimes pronounced just as си, especially by geologists. Burzuchius (talk) 08:50, 9 October 2019 (UTC)

@Burzuchius: Interesting, I had no idea! So SiO₂ would be "силициум о два", but SiF₄ would be "силициум фтор четыре"? Or is it more complicated? (I wonder if other languages do this; in English of course all elements from H to Og are just pronounced as letters in chemical formulae.) Double sharp (talk) 11:52, 9 October 2019 (UTC)

@Double sharp: I asked a few native speakers of Russian (mostly non-chemists, though). Elements with single-letter abbreviations are usually read as single letters, so it's usually "силициум эф четыре". I've also heard one say that in school, they strictly read (/rɛd/, past tense) letters and so pronounced it "си эф четыре". ― Дрейгорич / Dreigorich Talk 12:13, 9 October 2019 (UTC)

@Дрейгорич: I see; so only for something like SiCl₄ would we see something like "силициум хлор четыре"? But Burzuchius mentioned potassium (калий, K) as well in his list of other elements, which is a single-letter symbol. Is this mostly for nonmetals only, or is there some choice of how to say the symbols? How would WF₆ or Y₂O₃ be said? And can every symbol be just read as letters? I'm sure that typical Slavic consonant-cluster bonanzas would make most easy to pronounce, but how you'd say Bh for bohrium or Th for thorium seems to be anyone's guess: is h interpreted as х there, or something? (My apologies if I am asking too many questions!) Double sharp (talk) 12:21, 9 October 2019 (UTC)

@Double sharp: For Bh, Th, I'd imagine being forced to use бэ-аш and тэ-аш or борий and торий, as using -х sounds too wrong (a final -х pretty much needs a vowel before it). I agree with "силициум хлор четыре" as I remember HCl being read out as "аш хлор". I'm not sure about иттрий vs. игрек, but I guess вольфрам would be preferred over дубль-вэ. A native confirmed the consistent exception of калий, though, as ка can be mistaken for calcium. ["Калий это исключение из этого правила. Это только потому, что [ка] можно проассоциировать с кальцием также."] I'm a non-native speaker, so I'm not sure about the details, This is only my educated guess on the situation. ― Дрейгорич / Dreigorich Talk 12:33, 9 October 2019 (UTC)

@Double sharp: I'd recommend checking this out, which may provide more (sent to me by a native speaker): Chemical formulae in Russian ― Дрейгорич / Dreigorich Talk 12:54, 9 October 2019 (UTC)

@Дрейгорич: Thank you; I will take a look! Double sharp (talk) 13:43, 9 October 2019 (UTC)

One small note: my guess would be that in those chemical formulas, you'd actually separate words by hyphens rather than spaces. It feels a bit more natural in Russian in those extremely rare situations when multiple words form a single unit (cf. Нью-Йорк, Шри-Ланка). So I'd figure K₂SO₄ would be "калий-два-эс-о-четыре".

What Burzuchius said seems absolutely correct. I'll also note that the chemistry schoolbook from the Moscow State University linked in this discussion also entirely supports that.--R8R (talk) 14:45, 9 October 2019 (UTC)

Price of gold and silver in francs

Did you find those prices? Sandbh (talk) 01:19, 15 December 2018 (UTC)

Unfortunately, I have only found prices for until 1873, here. (POB is gold as traded in Paris, PAB is silver as traded in Paris.) If you happen to have the prices from between 1874 and 1897, I would be most grateful if you shared.--R8R (talk) 15:45, 15 December 2018 (UTC)

Email

Hi -- just emailed you; pinging you here since you mentioned you don't often check your email. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 12:52, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

Thank you. I'll check it tonight.--R8R (talk) 12:58, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

2018 Year in Review

		Military history service award
		For you work on Thorium, which has nuclear weaponry applications, you are hereby presented awarded this Military history WikiProject Service 1 stripe. Congrats! TomStar81 (Talk) 19:11, 4 January 2019 (UTC)

		The Half Barnstar
		For you work on Thorium, which has nuclear weaponry applications, you are hereby awarded The Right Half of the Half Barnstar. Congrats. TomStar81 (Talk) 19:11, 4 January 2019 (UTC)

archived

[5] I don't mind the archiving, but why having to look at it? -DePiep (talk) 13:22, 8 January 2019 (UTC)

My question is, how come the graph is vertically stretched (the production graph by a factor of -1.7, and your price graph by a factor of -3), but the line looks fine, as if it were supposed to look like this, but when the stretching is removed (i.e., the graph is vertically stretched by a factor of -1), the line actually appears distorted (flattened)? Why does it look okay when stretched and not okay when not stretched?--R8R (talk) 14:53, 8 January 2019 (UTC)

Oops, now I see: your edit was no about that archived thing. I will take a good look at this. -DePiep (talk) 15:41, 8 January 2019 (UTC)

Update on 124 and 126

I understand that you are very busy IRL (I also had a round of exams recently), and I apologize for seeming impatient. I just wanted to ask, roughly when we can finish the remaining work on 124 and 126 and publish them? Also, regarding moves, I believe I found a solution that will only require admin assistance to perform history merges. ComplexRational (talk) 21:53, 24 January 2019 (UTC)

No no no, it should be me who apologizes. I really thought I'd be able to make it and I wasn't. So! Today is the Tatyana Day, or as it is alternatively known, Student Day (in Russian, the word "студент" refers specifically to university or college students), which means the exams are over. (It was literally three minutes ago that I learned the date was religious in origin. It isn't celebrated but is regardless memorable because it closely coincides with the end of the winter examination period.) I'll look at at it on Monday-Tuesday-Wednesday---sometime during the next week, presumably during its first half. How's that sound?--R8R (talk) 15:32, 25 January 2019 (UTC)

Sounds good to me. ComplexRational (talk) 19:16, 25 January 2019 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) We have an article on it, which was on the Main Page on the day itself, but with a different spelling; I've created a redirect from the spelling with a Y. ^_^ Double sharp (talk) 16:02, 26 January 2019 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Original Barnstar
	For your superbly crafted !vote over this AfD. ∯WBGconverse 13:06, 5 February 2019 (UTC)

Thank you very much! I, too, like how it came out.--R8R (talk) 13:24, 5 February 2019 (UTC)

in lieu of a forgotten ping

I forgot to ping you, but I replied at the first section on my now-definitely-too-long talk page. ^_^ Double sharp (talk) 14:57, 17 February 2019 (UTC)