Talk:Nuclear chemistry

Structure of this page

I'm a bit hazy: Is this not meant to be a general introduction to the topic, becuase I'm not 100% clear on the working group/discipline homepage/defacto category/list/whatever paradigm yet. I'm going to work on the presumption that it is meant to be an article first, please correct me if I'm wrong. - brenneman 06:14, 22 December 2006 (CST)

Hi Aaron, I was trying to write a short introduction to the area of chemistry with some examples to explain what nuclear chemistry is. I was hoping to include at least one example of each of the main areas of nuclear chemistry.Mark Rust

• Did some copyediting - not my field, but I think you need to get a Chemistry editor to oversee approval who has not worked on the article, according to CZ rules.

Think you need a longer lead, that can serve as an abstract of the whole article. The reference style is not worked out yet, but can you get web links to the cited references? Important for verificationGareth Leng 16:06, 23 December 2006 (CST)

References

• Do we have to use references which are on line references. My worry is that many references which are on line are ones which the normal reader has to pay to read (a bit like a pay per view system). I think that we should use a combination of books which could be obtained through a good science libary and references to journal articles.Mark Rust

• No clear rules on references and a combination is fine, but the content needs to be verified before approval, so linking makes this much easier (to an abstract is usually enough), and open access sources of course are ideal. I think we need to establish an expectation that Journal references will have been checked for CZ articles.Gareth Leng 09:06, 25 December 2006 (CST)

Hi, I saw with interest that you suggested that journal references should be checked as part of the process of apporving an article. I have used a large number of Elsevier journal references for writing the nuclear chemistry page, I do not know if you want to read each reference in full but if you want to look at the papers (or just the abstracts) then please go to [1]. I think that the idea of an editor who has had little to do with the writing making a judegment about the journal references is a good idea and should be a part of the peer review process which leads to the approval of a page.Mark Rust 05:40, 28 December 2006 (CST)

Further work

• I'd suggest that this article is not yet ready to be approved. The lead needs work, and there are several sections where the prose also has room for improvement. I'll probably not be able to do much over the next few days, but following from the new year I'm happy to work on this. - brenneman 16:29, 23 December 2006 (CST)
  • I see your point that the text is not perfect, but I am thinking that the content is better than the "nuclear chemistry" page at wikipedia. The page we have here is likely to provide the reader with a reasonable overview of the subject, I would like to know what we should be aiming to do. Should each page be an overview of a topic, or as detailed as a undergraduate textbook ?Mark Rust

    No question its much much better than WP, and to me as an outsider it looks like a good clear overview. I think that as we are preparing for the full launch, we need our approved articles to display all the qualities that we would aspire CZ should reach, we want to start with a high bar on approval (not unrealistically high, but these articles will be templates for what follows in the short term) ;-)Gareth Leng 09:06, 25 December 2006 (CST)

    And finally, no not all articles should be detailed and technical, and this article is a gateway into others so should be relatively simple and uncluttered with detail. We're aiming at all classes of article, from for the intelligent layman to for the expert, and an article shouldn't necessarily try to meet all these readers, it might help to state on the Talk page exactly the audience aimed at here, that would make feedback more focussed. Gareth Leng 09:10, 25 December 2006 (CST)

Outline

Proposed structure

Current structure

Early history Main areas Radiochemistry Radiation chemistry Study of nuclear reactions Radioisotope production Neutrons Other Uses The nuclear fuel cycle The study of used fuel Fuel cladding interactions Absorption of fission products on surfaces Spinout areas Kinetics (use within mechanistic chemistry) Uses within geology, biology and forensic science Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) References Text books

Early history Main areas Radiochemistry Radiation chemistry Study of nuclear reactions Radioisotope production Processes Slow neutrons Fast neutrons Fast protons, deuterons and other positive projectiles Formation by the decay of parent isotopes Uses Sealed sources The nuclear fuel cycle The study of used fuel Fuel cladding interactions Absorption of fission products on surfaces Spinout areas Kinetics Geology, biology and forensic science Nuclear magnetic resonance References Text books Radiochemistry and Nuclear Chemistry Radioactivity, Ionizing radiation and Nuclear Energy The Radiochemical Manual

Maybe if we could begin by talking about final article length, as well as the level of detail desired? I've whacked in the existing outline with a proto-ouline to the left. If everyone adds/takes away from the proposed until we're all happy? - brenneman 21:03, 27 December 2006 (CST)

Target audience

I think that we should aim for a person who is an undergraduate who has no prior experience of the topic. The article should be a mixture of text and pictures, I joke that a picture with a decent caption (plus decent text) is worth 10000 words. A pretty picture with no text which puts it in context is worth zero words.Mark Rust

I appear to fit your target audience to a tee (undergraduate in a science, but with little chemistry experience (tested out of Chem 101)). I'll be back before the 31st. Also, please sign with 4 tildes (~~~~) instead of 3, so that the date and time of your signature show up (this talk page will get really messy really fast if it's anything like Talk:Biology or Talk:Chiropractic. Happy Holidays --ZachPruckowski 01:59, 26 December 2006 (CST)

Whit is SIMFUEL exactly? I'm checking the references. Think it's looking good, it seems to make sense to me as a total stranger to it all. I played about with the layout a bit to get it more compact on the page. Think you need a lead image to go on the right of the contents list. Gareth Leng 10:40, 28 December 2006 (CST)

Dear Gareth, I have put an answer as to what SIMFUEL is on your talk page. I have a slight problem with a picture as it is difficult to get a copyright free picture. I may well e-mail someone I know and ask for some photos (which they are happy about releasing into the public domain).Mark Rust 10:46, 28 December 2006 (CST)

You might consider this? [2] or this [3]?Gareth Leng 11:17, 28 December 2006 (CST)

An Outsider's Thoughts

First of all, to put my Exec Committee hat on for the moment, someone needs to fix the ToApprove template. It didn't point at the correct article. The proper steps to take are:

1. Select the history tab while looking at the article page. That will bring you here.
2. Then select one of the blue dates and times (each of those represent a version) and open it.
3. Copy the URL-box into your clipboard, and paste it into the "url=...|" part of the template.

I updated the template to point to the current version (at least the current version as of this writing) only to fix it to actually point at a page, not to claim that as the right version. Mark Rust or Gareth Leng, one of you two need to pick a version in the history that you like (assuming the current version isn't OK), and you two need to make sure that you update that to a working and acceptable version whenever you've got one (because of responding to criticism, finding errors, etc.) Also, make sure there's an underscore in the title where the space is (Nuclear_chemistry versus Nuclear chemistry), or the link messes up.

Now on to my read-through of the article. It is clearly aimed not just at college undergraduates, but specifically at Chemistry undergraduates (which put it rather a bit over my head in some areas). That is OK for an article like this, because it is a sub-field of Chemistry, and not aimed at the average passerby. That said, I think that the beginning could use some more information as to practical benefits of nuclear chemistry. There is discussion in the article about how "sealed sources" and "open sources" of radiation have medical uses, and there's a section on "Spinout areas". At least a few sentences from those could be repeated up top, since a fair few visitors will want to ask merely "what is Nuclear Chemistry?", get a 1-2 paragraph answer, and be on their merry way. Those readers need to be addressed as well as the chem students (who are currently well-addressed by the article). Imagine that you have 30-45 seconds to sell the concept of nuclear chemistry to your wife/girlfriend's friend, who is a non-scientist, and just wants the basics of what it is, what it means, and what it does. --ZachPruckowski (Who forgot to sign at first)

Approval process

I have been told that I am not formally permitted to put forward the nuclear chemistry article for approval. I am not sure what the exact rules, but I am keen to avoid being accused of trying to "self approve" my own work. So I am removing the approval notice from the article. Other chemistry editors should consider if the article should be put forward again for approval, I will continue to work on the article.Mark Rust 20:50, 29 December 2006 (CST)

Who said that? As I understand the process, you do need either one additional uninvolved editor, or two other involved editors backing you, but it doesn't seem unreasonable to have the article approved by this time next week at the latest. There seem to be two certified editors (Mark Rust and Gareth Leng) here, so you need one additional Chemistry Editor, but you only need him/her on board by the final approval date (which was Jan 2nd, no?), and you need all three editors to be OK with a single version of the article. If Jan 2nd rolls around and there are three editors involved in the page, it should work out fine. --ZachPruckowski 23:23, 29 December 2006 (CST)

I was told this on my talk page by User:Sarah Tuttle. I had thought that I was permitted to nominate my own haniwork for approval and that would only required the approval of a single uninvolved editor to have an article approved. My own view is that an editor should be able to nominate his own work for approval, perhapes a need exists for a new template for an editor requesting a second editor to make the approval.Mark Rust 03:22, 30 December 2006 (CST)

Yes I think you're right Mark, we need to make it possible for authors in some way to activate the approval process. I think you've done a great job here and the article is looking good; I'm not qualified to endorse the content, but on other aspects this article is a considerable credit to CZ.Gareth Leng 10:55, 30 December 2006 (CST)

Hola. I'm sorry if there was a misunderstanding, Mark. What I said (or meant to say) was that the article can not be approved *solely* by you, as you have obviously done the majority of the work here. I mentioned "other editors from your workgroup", and there wasn't anywhere I could find either one uninvolved editor or three involved editors who were onboard for approval. As the deadline was coming up, I just wanted to encourage you to find those other editors if you thought the article was ready for approval. The way that our approval process works right now has you putting a frozen version into the "toapprove" template. Gareth & I have been discussing how to more formally "activate" approval, or rally needed editors - right now it probably makes the most sense to just solicit them through workgroups when they are needed. Anyway, as I said before - the article is looking really good and I think is a great article to put up for approval - we just need the ducks in a row, as it were. -- Sarah Tuttle 11:54, 30 December 2006 (CST)

Sorry if I caused a problem here. We all seem to be saying similar things: The article is great, but as a matter of policy, we need either one uninvolved editor or three involved editors. Which requires that you recruit one or two additional editors qualified in Chemistry. Again, I apologize if I caused confusion. --ZachPruckowski 12:47, 30 December 2006 (CST)

Although I am writing the biological isotopes applications section., I'm available for approval otherwise if you think all the parts are together. Someone else chan check me on the biochem. DavidGoodman 04:05, 1 January 2007 (CST)

Nuclear medicine v. Radiation Oncology

I'm just getting here for a first look, and I'd like to bring up an issue for discussion. In the treatment and diagnosis of people and animals in medicine and vetinerary medicine there is a distinction made in administration of radioactive chemicals and in the administration of radiation itself. For example, the administration of radioactive iodine to a person in order to treat a thyroid tumor is not handled by the same physicians, or generally even the same department, as the adminstration of external beam radiation to a thyroid tumor. On the one hand, once the external radiation interacts with a person's tissue, perhaps that might be considered some form of nuclear chemistry, in an abstract sense, but - at least in the United States, the term nuclear chemistry would never be used to refer to such a procedure. Most nuclear chemistry, to my knowedge, is used in diagnostic procedures like radioisotope imaging scans. In external radiation, there is the sharp distinction in medicine between diagnostic radiology, in which x-rays are used in very low levels for imaging, and radiation oncology, in which external radiation is used at near toxic levels on limited areas of the body for the retardation of malignant cell division.

This distinction would be an important one for users reading this article because they themselves, or family members, have been advised to undergo (or are undergoing) such procedures.

Perhaps an MD or medically astute Ph D from another area of the world might comment. Nancy Sculerati MD 09:31, 1 January 2007 (CST)