Wikipedia:Peer review/Photon/archive1

Photon

Hi, the editors at Photon would like to bring it to FA status. We've already had a scientific peer review by Astrobayes and two reviews at Talk:Photon by wonderful editors from biochemistry (Opabinia regalis and Peta), but we'd like a general review. Please give any suggestions that might help this article become Featured — thanks muchly! :) Willow 11:21, 15 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Overall the page looks pretty darn good. However it is a tad on the technical side, which may put off some readers. Here are a few comments:

~~Could the slash be removed by rewording "granular/particulate", "energy/momentum", "emit/absorb" and "emitting/absorbing"? It looks unpolished.~~

Fixed lame writing — sorry! ;)

I wouldn't think that a comma is needed following text enclosed in parentheses. Example: "...Standard Model)," and "many experiments)," and "a photon),".

Eliminated most of these, but kept a few that seemed grammatically necessary.

Okay thanks. I double-checked the grammar rules on keeping commas with parentheses, and it should apparently only be done if the comma would still needed without the parenthetical text. So I'm sorry, I may have gone overboard on that a bit. — RJH (talk) 16:43, 17 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

"A photon has two possible helicities (polarization states) and is described by three continuous parameters, the components of its wave vector, which determine its wavelength λ and its direction of propagation." There should be a colon following "parameters". Otherwise there is some ambiguity that may be read as if there were five or more parameters.

Excellent catch, fixed that.

~~Could the "ps" in "10 ps" be linked to the picosecond article?~~

Linked that, and also the other units in the article. Much better!

~~It is standard practice to place inline citations after punctuation, rather than before.~~

OK, fixed that.

~~In the "Wave–particle duality" section word emphasis is performed by both bold and italics. It is convention to use italics for word emphasis.~~

OK, fixed that.

At the FAC, you may get criticised for the excessive amount of text inside parentheses.

Is it really excessive? Usually, they're helpful explanatory links.

I think that part of the problem was that some of the reader software for the sight impaired doesn't handle parentheses very well. So I got called once or twice for that. But it may be less of an issue now. — RJH (talk) 16:43, 17 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

~~"Fourier modes" should be linked to a page such as Fourier series for readers who are unfamiliar with Fourier analysis.~~

Another excellent catch. Fixed that.

~~Would it be useful to mention that, although a photon is massless, it is affected by a gravitational field per general relativity?~~

Added paragraph under "Contributions to invariant mass". We had been kind of avoiding that since the effects are not peculiar to photons but pertain to light generally. However, it's bound to come up for readers, so it's good to mention it.

Thanks. — RJH (talk) 16:19, 15 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for your excellent review! :) Willow 18:51, 15 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I took a shot at cleaning up the first sentence; the parentheses were really a bad idea there. This sentence from the introduction also really bothers me: Photons have many applications in technology, such as super-powerful quantum computers and unbreakable quantum cryptography. "Super-powerful" is not a neutral term, and "unbreakable" is speculative, so I rather dislike both adjectives. But the biggest issue is that there are a tremendous number of technological applications of photons; why pick two that are still in their infancy? For example, you listed lasers as an area of research, when lasers already have many commercial applications; perhaps you should switch lasers with quantum computers/cryptography? Really, that final sentence should have three or four different areas that give a fair survey of the technological applications of photons.

I haven't got past the intro yet. I'll try to look more later. -- SCZenz 20:09, 15 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, SCZenz, I added a few applications at the end of the lead — how does it read now? Maybe you can think of better ones. I like your re-wording but I had to change it slightly, since (for both brevity and beauty) the article uses the term "light" to mean all forms of electromagnetic radiation. Looking forward to your other feedback, Willow 22:24, 15 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]