User talk:Paul Wormer

Tasks: start a new article • add basic, wanted or requested articles • add definitions • add metadata • edit new pages

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Paul Wormer

Current talk page

Archive 1, Archive 2

Quantum mechanics

Now set up with an experimental advanced subpage. i migrated information from the previous article to various subpages too. Chris Day 14:00, 1 April 2008 (CDT)

Would you please critique my article on the compressibility factor of gases?

Paul, I have been working (in one of my sandboxes) for over a week on an article to be called Compressibility factor (gases). I am about ready to create it as a CZ article. It can be viewed at User:Milton Beychok/Sandbox2. Would you be so kind as to read and critique it? You may leave your critique comments on the talk page at User talk:Milton Beychok/Sandbox2. Thanks in advance, - Milton Beychok 14:32, 1 April 2008 (CDT)

Compressibility factor (gases)

Paul, if you would still like to nominate Compressibility factor (gases) for approval, please do so. Regards, - Milton Beychok 12:42, 14 April 2008 (CDT)

AD/CE

Probably worth setting up a thread on the forums to discuss this, followed by a formal policy. There was a big go-round on Wikipedia about this point (although I think it was BC versus BCE, there). J. Noel Chiappa 17:33, 14 April 2008 (CDT)

There's been a thread on the forum about this for some time (What about Anno Domini and BC), think the decision is author/workgroup preference, in that there are some areas where CE/BCE is the only acceptable form. It does seem that CE and BCE are rapidly increasing in use. I searched on Google for "5th century CE" (32,000 hits) vs "5th century AD" (172,000 hits) and suspect that the relatively high hit rate for CE use does reflect a significant unease with using AD and BC. See http://www.religioustolerance.org/ce.htm for rationale and background. So personally I'd favour CE and BCE, anticipating that these will become dominant usage. I think the only real objection to them is that they are less well known, but this seems to be changing.Gareth Leng 02:43, 15 April 2008 (CDT)

Hmmm. Well, it would be nice if it was formalized as a policy. Also, I'm not big at all on leaving it up to the authors, that will result in a real mish-mosh, and it will also result in either i) people racing to be the ones to start articles, or ii) people getting into revert wars where they convert back and forth. (One necessarily gets one or the other, if we have 'author decides', no?) Although I suppose anything that caused a 'land rush' on starting articles isn't all bad! :-) J. Noel Chiappa 10:27, 15 April 2008 (CDT)

I would just use both; I typically use: 2008 AD(CE) or some variant of. That way you satisfy everybody. --Robert W King 10:30, 15 April 2008 (CDT)

As long as it was your idea...

...yes ;-) --D. Matt Innis 19:09, 15 April 2008 (CDT)

Compressibility factor (gases)

Approved! Looks like the engineering and chemistry workgroups are off on a great run! --D. Matt Innis 19:19, 21 April 2008 (CDT)

Please read my comment of April 11th on the Talk page of Mole (unit)

Paul, I proposed a re-write of the Examples section of the Mole unit article which is mostly a simplified rewording of most of that section. The only part that I removed was the part that I thought would be more appropriately included in an article on chemical stoichiometry.

I hope that my proposed re-write doesn't endanger our working relationship. Please let me know what you think of it. Milton Beychok 01:08, 23 April 2008 (CDT)

Faraday

Thanks for the nudge; I had gotten confused about whether I was or was not allowed to copyedit while the article was in 'Nominated', so I solved my confusion by doing nothing! I have posted on the Talk:, and once I'm sure I won't be causing a problem, I will give it a go-through. Mind, I will only be able to re-arrange what's there to be clear; I have a basic understanding of E+M, and so can explain basic physics things better, but I know little of Faraday's life or work, and so will be relying on the existing article contents for all the data. J. Noel Chiappa 14:06, 23 April 2008 (CDT)

PS: You might want to archive some of the older stuff off the top of your personal Talk: page; it's getting a bit big. The template {{archive box|auto=long}} on both this and the "/Archive 1" subpage gives a nice look, if that's useful to you. J. Noel Chiappa 14:06, 23 April 2008 (CDT)

van der Waals

Hi Paul, please take another look at the references there, as explained on the talk page. Thanks! Btw, just saw that you already started spherical harmonics - I will probably join in there soon. -- Daniel Mietchen 17:45, 23 April 2008 (CDT)

Physical Properties Templates

Hi Paul,

I posted this on Talk:Cadmium, but wanted to get some feedback from Chem Editors so figured I'd just ask...

I had this kooky idea of trying to store materials physical properties data in templates so we can call it up from multiple locations and keep it current. That way we can do things like this:

Selected Electronegativities:
{{Selected Electronegativities|Hydrogen}}

and... Selected Melting Points:
{{Selected melting points|Hydrogen}}

and also....

{{[[Template:Resizable Periodic Table of Elements |Resizable Periodic Table of Elements ]]}} ...pretty easily.

Also, I've started the {{Physical properties}} template to display the info in the articles (please see Lead or Cadmium/MSDS for examples). I have (I believe) left open the option of using the system for any material, not just the chemical elements. Any objections? Reasons it won't work? Things I should change? Feedback is welcome....--David Yamakuchi 10:23, 25 April 2008 (CDT)

I agree that the editing of the property values need to be easy enough that a Non-Technical Person (NTP) can do it without confusion or errors. Thus far, I have been focused on getting the system working and then spent a little time on the "view" of the data, which right now, looks like it might live in the MSDS or Isotopes page. In the future, perhaps we can write different "viewers" for the data, including maybe a "edit the data values viewer".

At this time, if you click on the "xxxxx/Physical Properties" link at the bottom of the table/view, it takes you to the template to add data (stored in the template in the form of a switch statement), which is maybe a simpler syntax (better for NTPs) for the data than the wikitable was with all it's added "centers" and pipes and such. I'm currently looking at a slightly more sophisticated system for the Isotopes (or Isotpes as I guess we are now spelling it).--David Yamakuchi 11:16, 1 May 2008 (CDT)

Mole (unit), yet again

Paul:

I understand your revision of the lead-in section and have no problem with it.

However, I would still like to re-write the Examples section as per my comment of April 11th on the Talk page of the aricle (the next-to-last comment on that Talk page) if you agree to it. I think that my rewrite will be more understandable by non-physicists.

I assume you are at home again and I hope you enjoyed your stay in California. Regards, Milton Beychok 11:26, 28 April 2008 (CDT)

Of course we are not at war

Paul, that was just my way of saying that it wasn't really that important to me and I would rather drop the subject. Best regards, - Milton Beychok 11:42, 29 April 2008 (CDT)

Your attention needed..

..here --Thanks, D. Matt Innis 12:01, 29 April 2008 (CDT)

Please look at Fluid catalytic cracking

Paul, if you have some spare time, look at Fluid catalytic cracking and tell me what you think of it. It is the most difficult article that I have undertaken at Citizendium because it has been over 50 years since I designed an FCC unit and (a) my memory is not what it used to be and (b) the advances made in those 50 years have been numerous. Regards, Milt - Milton Beychok 03:44, 9 May 2008 (CDT)

Since you once served an internship in an ammonia plant

Paul, you might enjoy a stroll down memory lane by reading Ammonia production. - Milton Beychok 00:48, 11 May 2008 (CDT)

Formatting of article list on your user page

Hi Paul, just reformatted the list to allow for easy progress monitoring. Hope you like it; if not, feel free to revert. -- Daniel Mietchen 05:12, 13 May 2008 (CDT)

I just noticed this

I just noticed this one of Larry Sanger's archived Talk pages:

Milton added this to WP. Now WP has two articles on the same subject, a good one (by Milton) and a poorly done one, this. Up to the 3 000 000! --Paul Wormer 04:28, 12 May 2008 (CDT)

I take it that you don't like my having posted my "Fluid catalytic cracking" on Wikipedia. Is that correct? Milton Beychok 16:49, 14 May 2008 (CDT)

Definitions

Hi Paul, I too had been using lower case to start the definitions, i think we agree on that style. However, Larry corrected some of mine and it says to use upper case to start the definition at CZ:Definitions ("Begin the definition with a capital letter, and end with a period. "). It kind of make sense since there is a colon between the article name and the definition. I suppose that it also means the definition can be used on its own as a sentence without the prefix of "Article name:" although, I do not thing that is currently the case. Chris Day 10:28, 16 May 2008 (CDT)

Excellent Cauchy

Juste-milieu on Cauchy--I was a math major at Notre Dame back when it was just as Catholic as Cauchy was, and so he was our great hero! The article integrates the man, the math and the milieu very well, so I signed the approvals. Richard Jensen 07:15, 18 May 2008 (CDT)

Energy

Hi Paul, we are currently trying to design a system that handles disambiguations (see here and here for details). This also effects the way terms with multiple uses are to be used in Related article subpages and similar places. The ultimate goal is to have a consistent disambiguation handling system across CZ (another difference to WP), to list all the different uses at Energy (disambiguation) and to link from there to Energy (kinetic), Energy (chemical), Energy (mechanical), Dirichlet energy, Energy (psychology) and so on as articles get created on those topics. Groetjes, Daniel Mietchen 05:37, 22 May 2008 (CDT)

Ambiguous articles like this one are going to be moved to disambiguated versions thereof, and the 'blöd' message you see is just a reminder to fix that. I did that right now such that your user page looks normal again. Further splits of the article into subtopics of the sort listed above may become necessary with time. -- Daniel Mietchen 07:26, 22 May 2008 (CDT)

You probably saw a temporary state after I had created Faraday's law/Definition, but before I had gotten to Faraday's law (disambiguation). J. Noel Chiappa 10:27, 22 May 2008 (CDT)