Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Physics/Archive December 2019

A proposal to create a "Wikipedia" of physics problems

I have used Python-LaTex to create a gui for an open source bank of solved physics problems. Such problems are abundant on the internet but they are too disorganized in both copyright status and format to be useful for instructors. I have been working on this project for six years and believe I am ready to start collaborating and/or seeking funding for this project. In particular, my software is now sufficiently complex that I don't want to continue until I know which platform and which markup language to use. I began with Wiktext, but am currently am using LaTeX and have experimented with Wikiversity and Bitbucket as platforms. Any advice from savy programmers and/or information system experts would be appreciated.

For more information and motivation for this project visit: Wikiversity:Quizbank/Cost-benefit_analysis --Guy vandegrift (talk) 18:51, 1 December 2019 (UTC)

Mesogen

The mesogen article needs to be wikified, verified and analyzed for relevancy.--MaoGo (talk) 17:37, 4 December 2019 (UTC)

The first question is whether we need it when we already have liquid crystal. XOR'easter (talk) 17:43, 4 December 2019 (UTC)

I agree liquid crystal is a much better article. It's not clear if anything would be useful to merge from the current mesogen article. Some people use the term mesogen to refer to just the molecular unit itself and it might be possible to write an article about the different types of units that can from LCs. But the current mesogen article seems to be about LCs themselves. --{{u|Mark viking}} {Talk} 18:35, 4 December 2019 (UTC)

Potential Alpha Energy Concentration

I'm pondering whether to accept Draft:Potential Alpha Energy Concentration (PAEC) or if there's some other mainspace article it could be merged to. Thoughts? Clarityfiend (talk) 09:09, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

Hm. PAEC is a measure that has been used to describe inhalation dosage in radon exposure, so one possibility is Health_effects_of_radon#Concentration_units. --{{u|Mark viking}} {Talk} 23:17, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

Gyroscopic Motion Machine

• Gyroscopic Motion Machine (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

New article, looks promotional. XOR'easter (talk) 23:05, 24 November 2019 (UTC)

Incoherent bloat. Give it a prod. Xxanthippe (talk) 23:40, 24 November 2019 (UTC).

The article appears to be written by the inventor, and doesn't cite any reliable sources to support the technology itself. The only reference cited regarding the subject of the article is the inventor's own pending patent application. Prodded.--Srleffler (talk) 00:27, 25 November 2019 (UTC)

Sounds like the right way to go. XOR'easter (talk) 02:18, 25 November 2019 (UTC)

Found by the same means and also just prodded: Celalettin-Field Quantum Observation Tunnel. XOR'easter (talk) 15:25, 29 November 2019 (UTC)

Prod supported. It would be hard to find garbage worse than the above. Xxanthippe (talk) 21:14, 29 November 2019 (UTC).

• If there's anything in this, it's an overlap with Dean drive. It's promotional PRIMARY sourced stuff, fails all of RS / V for lack of secondary sources. Andy Dingley (talk) 22:20, 29 November 2019 (UTC)

I would suggest that the ghost of John W. Campbell was involved, but ghosts are a more plausible form of woo than the Dean drive. Robert McClenon (talk) 04:42, 8 December 2019 (UTC)

Dean drives are wonderful little things, second only to the Sandy Kidd device. I've built a few of them - and sold them for good money too. If I find another box of affordable high-end coreless motors and good flywheels, I'd like to run off some more - especially now with CNC mills, I could do something very attractive. They work fine - although few people understand how, or what the limitations of what they do (and for how far they can do it) are. As always with gyroscopes, they sort out the observers who've watched Laithwaite and those who've read Feynman. Andy Dingley (talk) 11:51, 8 December 2019 (UTC)

Draft: Unified Scattering Function

A review of this draft is requested. Should it be accepted? (Does it appear to be academic physics?) Robert McClenon (talk) 04:39, 8 December 2019 (UTC)

With the exception of #13 the references are all decades old, from Beaucage, or not used in relation to the article topic. The article is written by Beaucage, apparently to promote his own model. Not an expert in this particular topic but the content looks reasonable. This needs a thorough notability check, however. It is not unknown (1, 2). --mfb (talk) 13:36, 8 December 2019 (UTC)

Dark matter as a controversial theory or proposed form of matter

There's a dispute at Talk:Dark_matter on whether to call dark matter a controversial theory or a proposed form of matter. Would appreciate some extra opinions there. Banedon (talk) 02:14, 10 December 2019 (UTC)

Level of expertise, and/or tagging articles in need of less technical intros

Hello! Reading through physics articles, I often wonder who they are for: it’s hard to discern any uniform comprehension level that’s being aimed at. Has a dialogue taken place articulating how best to align science article content with Wikipedia’s accessibility goals? Or has an explicit readability level ever been set?

I also note that, in some instances, a science article may be accompanied by a blurb reading “For a more accessible and less technical introduction to this topic, see etc.,” so I also wonder: beyond clarifying what audience Wikipedia’s science articles are intended for, how have some science articles in particular been tagged as needing simpler versions? On what basis do some articles, and not others, receive the not-in-an-anorak rewrite? I would imagine the basis to be how foundational a topic is, but whether this is really the criterion is unclear from actual practice.

I’ve been editing Wikipedia off-and-on for, sigh, I guess it’ll be two decades soon. I won’t get into my issues with it… but with more discretionary time now I’m thinking of getting back into it, under my handle rather than under IPs, and more proactively. Without getting into too much of “who I am” (yawn) I’ll say explaining complex ideas to the layman, à la Richard Feynman in QED, is an area of strong interest to me. Another is popularizing “writing for scientists,” i.e. helping others learn how to present ideas not only intelligibly but compellingly to the non-boffin.

I’d be delighted to help make science more accessible to a wider audience, and to help make communication less alien to the specialist uncomfortable outside of a niche. I’d imagine groundwork for such projects has been laid already, so there’d be no need to duplicate it, but I’m having no luck finding any. So I thought I’d ask!

-Danopticon (talk) 16:43, 14 December 2019 (UTC)

Welcome! The level of writing and accessibility is a perennial issue here. I think there is a general consensus that the guideline Wikipedia:Make technical articles understandable is a reasonable starting point for thinking about reading level and accessibility. In particular, "write one level down" is usually a reachable goal and "put the most accessible content at the beginning" is great for readers who just want a general sense of what a topic is about. --{{u|Mark viking}} {Talk} 18:06, 14 December 2019 (UTC)

Big Bang FAR

I have nominated Big Bang for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Delist" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. – John M Wolfson (talk • contribs) 22:16, 14 December 2019 (UTC)

I believe the link for the review is Wikipedia:Featured_article_review/Big_Bang/archive3. --{{u|Mark viking}} {Talk} 23:39, 14 December 2019 (UTC)