User talk:Sbyrnes321/Archives/2011

why?

Steve, what is driving you to forbid any contents being imported from free space into vacuum after we agree on a merged and pruned it to almost nothing? What about the is small section on classical electrodynamics is bugging you? Dicklyon (talk) 19:01, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

Haha, I'm not opposed to everything in the article on principle, I just think in this particular case.... Anyway you can see I edited the section to try to emphasize the parts that are aspects of the vacuum and not just aspects of classical electromagnetism, and I'm OK with keeping it now. (I would still be OK deleting it too!) I had already done some work a couple months ago to make sure that vacuum discussed perfect vacuum well enough, so that free space could be deleted. So I thought it was already "optimal" discussion of the perfect vacuum. It's not that I'm opposed on principle! :-) --Steve (talk) 19:14, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

Oh, I see you deleted that. If you feel strongly, whatever, I don't care that much, it's far from the worst thing on wikipedia. :-P --Steve (talk) 19:20, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

Kudos

Kudos for your new animation. Very nice. - 2/0 (cont.) 12:47, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

Yes, very nice work. You might want to also show the amplitude envelopes, to indicate that for the eigenstates the amplitude is fixed. Dicklyon (talk) 16:11, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

Thanks!!!

Dicklyon, that's a good suggestion, I'll think about whether I can do that without making things too busy. --Steve (talk) 09:30, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

UPDATE: I decided it would make the animation too much to take in. I made a separate one instead, see File:StationaryStatesAnimation.gif, which I put into just the stationary state article for now. --Steve (talk) 18:48, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

Moment (Physics) page

To Mr. Steve,

I am an Civil Engineering Student at the New Jersey Institute of Technology. I am editing the Wikipedia page- Moments (Physics) as an assignment for a course. While I was about to submit my assignment, I received your message. I find your response to me rude and unprofessional. While first looking at the page, the call to action notes that the article needs citations. It does not say that this article is a stub, or that it is similar to something else and should be merged. It just plainly states that it needs citations. The previous version of the article is still very similar to that of the torque page, and just directs people to other pages. If there was something in the 'things you can do' broom that states to place this within another page, I would have worked on that. There is no 'broom action' on the torque page. The deleting of my sources, and images, just brings the page back to its current state of needing citations.

I am new to editing Wikipedia, and spent a very long time determining how to edit the page in question, and how to get everything to come out clear and concise. I do not appreciate your actions, or your email to me.

Sincerely, Melissa MelissaSalsano-NJITWILL (talk) 19:35, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

Re: Moment (physics)

To Steve,

I apologize if in my first reply to you I came off as brash or rude. This was not my intention, however I was quite disappointed. I mistakenly categorized your intentions as negative ones. I understand that the page should be a disambiguation page, and that it was before I touched it, well unofficially at least. When I decided to edit this page, I was unfamiliar with this type of page, and wondered why there were no explanations or pictures. As a Civil Eng. student, we are taught that moments and torque are different things, and although I glanced at the torque page, while making my revision, I guess one could get the idea that the topics are quite similar, (according to the pages). I know that the page is in reference to the physics quantity of a moment, but for a engineering students, there is no moment page. There is a bending moment page, and I did not see that one when attempting to find a page. I am still trying to wrap my head around the similarities, while for 4 years I was was told there weren't any.

On your behalf, I understand you are just trying to improve the site, which is preserved for all users. I should not wage the sites relevance or accuracy because I have a project. That was not my intention, and I respect that you are attempting to better the site for the community. I have used Wikipedia many times to familiarize myself with a topic or understand random articles, and I appreciate its presence.

Maybe if I find some spare time this summer, or sooner, I will take a closer look and make it a disambiguation page, and find another avenue to dispel the difference between torque and moment. Maybe I will find out how to link all the words in such 'user talk' forums.

I appreciate your kindness, after I was quite unappreciative of your explanation. I hope you enjoy your weekend. :-) Melissa MelissaSalsano-NJITWILL (talk) 03:29, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for your response. The page was (and is) very problematic because it was functioning like a disambiguation page (or at least I wanted it to!) but not labeled that way. I'm partly to blame for that! Also I want to say sorry again for undoing your whole edit quickly (even the references) and asking you to do the hard work of incorporating it into a different article! I am guilty of the important wikipedia policy, "Do not bite the newcomers"!

I have worked on the torque vs moment issue, especially with the section Torque#Terminology. The idea is that most physicists (and introductory physics courses) call moment by the word "torque", and don't have a special word for the moment of a pure couple, which is the "torque" in engineering. (This isn't my field, but this is the best I can figure out from books and discussions with engineer wikipedia editors.)

You have a good point that "there isn't an article on moment" (well, there is, but it's hard to find because an engineer would not expect it to be called torque!) When I think about it, it would actually be better to rename the torque article as moment of force, because "moment of force" only means one thing, whereas "torque" means two different things. I will put a proposal about that. --Steve (talk) 03:58, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

ZPE in the 3rd Law of Thermodynamics

Hello,

You recently deleted my reference to ZPE in regards to the third law. While I would agree it has nothing to do with the law precisely, it is still a valid 'see also' reference. ZPE exists at absolute zero and therefore the system cannot have zero energy associated with it.

Perhaps though, rather than a 'see also' a reference to further reading would be more apropos. Would you agree? As a side note, if I'm horribly wrong I'm open to being corrected, seeing as you're a graduate and I'm an undergrad, however my understanding of ZPE would be that it's an appropriate 'see also' or 'further reading' topic.

DacodaNelson (talk) 03:18, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

Hi Dacoda,

I hope you didn't take my edit as rude! Just my own opinion, subject to change or overrule. :-)

Hmm, well it's true that the third law of thermodynamics is related to "things going on at absolute zero", and zero-point energy is also related to "things going on at absolute zero". But I don't think that's enough to say they're related to each other. After all, there are a lot of other articles too that are also related to "things going on at absolute zero", like quantum critical point and Bose-Einstein condensation and ground state, etc. Third law is not directly related to ZPE, because the third law of thermodynamics is about the entropy at absolute zero, not the energy. I would say that absolute zero is directly related to the third law, but all those other things (including ZPE) are not. In fact, ZPE would never play any role in classical thermodynamics, because only "energy changes" enter any of the equations, not "absolute energies". (That's my understanding.)

I think we should make it very easy for a reader to click from third law to absolute zero, and then very easy to click from absolute zero to ZPE, but not directly from third law to ZPE. (That's my opinion.)

Any reference that discusses the third law would be a very good thing to cite as a footnote or further reading. (Obviously!) I'm not crazy about the idea of putting zero-point energy in the "See also" section at the bottom (if that's what you're proposing). But if you did that, I guess I would not undo it, because I don't feel strongly enough. :-) --Steve (talk) 08:33, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

I didn't find it rude at all, if something doesn't make sense it should be removed from Wikipedia immediately. That said, I don't feel particularly strongly about it either. I do like your idea of clicking through to absolute zero and -then- to ZPE, that would actually make a lot more sense than a reference. It's sort of a personal thing that when I think 3rd law, I think absolute zero, and then jump to ZPE, but that's probably one of those weird personal physicist things, we're all a little screwy in the head.

At any rate, thanks for the advice.

Cheers, DacodaNelson (talk) 22:59, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

WP Physics in the Signpost

"WikiProject Report" would like to focus on WikiProject Physics for a Signpost article. This is an excellent opportunity to draw attention to your efforts and attract new members to the project. Would you be willing to participate in an interview? If so, here are the questions for the interview. Just add your response below each question and feel free to skip any questions that you don't feel comfortable answering. Other editors will also have an opportunity to respond to the interview questions. If you know anyone else who would like to participate in the interview, please share this with them. Have a great day. -Mabeenot (talk) 02:48, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

en-dashes

In this edit, you changed actual en-dashes to pairs of hyphens. WP:MOS calls for an en-dash, not a hyphen for a range of numbers, including years, pages, and other things. Thus:

300–305 (correct)

300--305 (inferior)

300-305 (incorrect)

Michael Hardy (talk) 19:03, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

Slander and libel! I did no such thing. I just cut-and-pasted a paragraph from one place to another, and that paragraph happened to hyphen-pairs. Check the edit again, you'll see. :-)

Keep fighting the good fight :-) --Steve (talk) 19:16, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

RuBee

Hello There! Thanks so much for contacting me. I am obviously completely new to editing, but am hoping to better understand its use as I go along-any tips are welcome! RuBee technology actually operates upon Gauss' Law, and is a great example of the law at work. Please let me know what you think.

Thanks again, Lauren — Preceding unsigned comment added by Lcabanel (talk • contribs) 19:43, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

Hi Lauren, welcome again! What you're saying is true: RuBee does use Gauss's law. Nevertheless, I don't think you'll have much luck keeping it as a "See also" for Gauss's law. Even if I put it back, probably (in my experience) someone else will delete it! The reason is people expect some sort of logical "threshold" for what articles are important enough to put in the See also. There are, after all, a lot of different topics that are "great examples of Gauss's law at work". Here are dozens of articles that are great examples of Gauss's law, Here are another few hundred more, Here are hundreds more... If Gauss's law has only three "See also" links, people sort of expect these to be the most important and relevant three links out of all of wikipedia! (More or less.) So something that sounds sort of obscure is likely to be deleted, unfortunately. An obscure link would only be OK if almost the entire article was directly and explicitly discussing Gauss's law. For example, no one complains that Maxwell's equations links to Jefimenko's equations--even though Jefimenko's equations are sort of obscure--because Jefimenko's equations are nothing more than another way to write Maxwell's equations.

Another way to think about it is, it is possible to completely understand Gauss's law--to be a world expert on the law!--without knowing anything about RuBee. Therefore it shouldn't be a link. By comparison, to be a world expert on Maxwell's equations, it is essential to also know Jefimenko's equations. So that's a more appropriate link. :-)

Hope that helps! Good luck and keep up the good work! :-) --Steve (talk) 21:10, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

Most excellent images!

Thank you so much for those plots of the detailed balance limit! They really spruce up the article.

I don't have Mathmatica, but I wouldn't mind trying to formulate a spreadsheet in google docs. Can you send me your worksheet?

Maury Markowitz (talk) 16:10, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

Thanks! [1] Here ya go. Ignore columns 7 through 10, they're a calculation that I later decided was unhelpful so I deleted it and didn't use it. I think everything there is right...don't bet your life...obviously the efficiency is a fraction not a percent, so multiply it by 100. --Steve (talk) 16:42, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

Ok, here's the tough question... do you know any way to use this data to do a analysis for a tandem cell? Maury Markowitz (talk) 20:11, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

Very unlikely. I think you need to change the program. Sorry that you need to port it to another language first, but I don't think it would take terribly long to do that. :-) --Steve (talk) 23:19, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

Well that's my speciality, are you willing to part with the source? I'm sure I can find some way to read it. This might be an interesting challenge for JS! Maury Markowitz (talk) 13:36, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

Sure! See here and in particular PDF printout of the source code with lots of comments. "I hereby release this source code to the public domain." Good luck, ask me if you have questions.  :-) --Steve (talk) 17:31, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

Benford's Law

Hey, I found the images you made for Benford's Law really helpful, and just wanted to say thanks. Vicarious (talk) 21:21, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

That's very kind of you to say! :-) --Steve (talk) 00:46, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

Molecular Diffusion

Hi Steve, I remember you gave me some good advice in molecular diffusion last time I stuck something up on the talk page there, and I've just stuck up a new proposed layout for a major overhaul. I'd be grateful if you could give it a look-over and tell me what you think. Thanks, ChE Fundamentalist (talk) 19:00, 21 August 2011 (UTC)

sorry...very busy... --Steve (talk) 03:38, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

Wavefunction

Just to let you know - I left a note for you on the wave function article talk page. Its nothing big, guess you havn't the time to notice (don't worry) over there, so i'll repeat here: basically the historical context has been expanded and I incorperated you're statement into it as you suggested. Hope you don't mind. Apologies for that time also - actually I thought it was well-written eneogh to be the start of a stand alone section for anyone to continue from, which is why I did it. Feel free 2 delete this after.

F=q(E+v^B) (talk) 16:25, 21 November 2011 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by F=q(E+v^B) (talk • contribs)