Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Elements

To create books, simply click on the "Create a book" link, which can be found in the "print/export" toolbox on the left of your screen. See Help:Books if you need help, or just drop be a line if you are still confused/unsure of yourself. Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 03:17, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

See also

• Book:Chemical elements (sorted alphabetically)
• Book:Chemical elements (sorted by number)

Note:Need to change element 112 name to copernicium. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Chemicalinterest (talk • contribs) 16:28, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

Done. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 16:32, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

Still working on this... --mav (reviews needed) 16:28, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

I have proposed at Talk:Caesium-133 that the Caesium-133 article be merged into the Caesium article, but nobody has responded yet. I thought I would mention it here to cast a wider net. I wanted to see if there is some reason for a stub like this to exist when the main article (in my opinion) covers the importance of isotope 133 quite well. CosineKitty (talk) 20:58, 24 March 2010 (UTC)

If anything, it should IMO be merged as a section of Isotopes of caesium. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 18:09, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

Seems to have been merged to Isotopes of caesium now]]. Does anyone want to write anything more about this nuclide? Physchim62 (talk) 19:47, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

is a joke! The comprehensiveness of the article barely makes it be a B-class article! 76.119.232.42 (talk) 16:29, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

Nah... It is not supposed to be a copy of all of the individual elements pages; it is a summary of the element's properties. --Chemicalinterest (talk) 20:00, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

Hello Project Element members! I wanted to ask if people would be kind enough to check out two new copper-related articles written by a brand-new contributor, User:Enviromet.

• Antimicrobial properties of copper
• Antimicrobial copper alloy touch surfaces

Please feel free to fix the articles up in any way that you may think they need, and please, if you have suggestions about how he is writing the articles, leave him a note on his talk page. Enviromet has several more related articles that he intends to write soon, and I am hoping he can get the kinks ironed out in the first couple of articles so that he will have some idea what to do with the ones that are still in the planning stages. Many thanks, Invertzoo (talk) 21:20, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

It would be helpful if the lists of products usable are alphabetized, but I wouldn't know how to do them. --Chemicalinterest (talk) 19:59, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

We really need input from other people on the isotope and nuclide talk pages and the possibilities of their merger, transfer of info from one to the other, or continued split with few changes. Please see talk:isotope. SBHarris 18:43, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

I improved the iron article. Please give guidelines on how to improve it further (I tried to follow the recommended element page). --Chemicalinterest (talk) 20:07, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

Looks a heck of a lot better than the version I last looked at. Will look more closely this weekend and see if I can help expand the history section. --mav (reviews needed) 01:34, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

I also improved the antimony article. I would like some guidelines on that too. --Chemicalinterest (talk) 16:35, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

Thnaks for the good work with the article! Here are a few points:

• The History section ends with 1783 making it look like that nothing important happened since that point. Was antimony ever used for something an now isn't, than it belongs here.
• The applications section lacks a references for the Stibnite as medication (This stuff needs very urgent a reference, because it reads like a medical advice) and the Antimony based drugs.
• The main application is as flame-proofing compound this should be mentioned more clearly.
• The toxicology section needs a little bit more than it acts similar to arsenic.
• The lead is to short and it is not summarizing the article.--Stone (talk) 19:37, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

It says the main application is a hardening agent for lead in lead-acid batteries. --Chemicalinterest (talk) 19:56, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

I expanded the precautions section for both toxicology and incompatibles. --Chemicalinterest (talk) 20:06, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

I added its former use as antimony pills.

I have limited access, so I cannot easily find a reference to stibnite as a medication. Thanks for the suggestions. Now for tin... --Chemicalinterest (talk) 20:10, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

Back to antimony for a second (and thanks, btw, for all your work!). I think you're going a bit far in comparing the toxicity of antimony with arsenic: antimony is usually reckoned to be much less toxic. I've got one reference (in French, unfortunately, but from the IPCS so a reliable source) which gives the acute toxic dose as 30–40 mg/kg. I'll have a go at rewriting that section. Physchim62 (talk) 17:30, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

Please share your views at the standard table talk page. Flying Jazz (talk) 17:58, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

User:Gurps npc (and his IP, Special:Contributions/144.211.101.117) recently added a series of changes to the elements articles involving how they are created. The edits appear to be in good faith, but it would help if someone could please review them for accuracy as they are (as yet) unreferenced. Thanks. --Ckatz^chat_spy 17:11, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

I quick-reverted some of them for technical reasons - introducing an unreferenced single-sentence (also too short and abrupt) statement into a GA, but some indeed need a check. Materialscientist (talk) 22:38, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

Apparently all of the Period articles (Period 2 element, Period 3 element) other than Period 1 element have been merged into Period (periodic table). I don't remember there ever being consensus for this and I strongly disagree with it. Anyone have any clue what's going on? --Cryptic C62 · Talk 14:53, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

Done by Kwamikagami (I've alerted him to this discussion here) back on April 18. This is the comment I see about it. DMacks (talk) 15:49, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

I had asked somewhere (I forget at this point where) if there were any reason to keep them, and there was no response. I've since been criticized for not merging Period 1 as well. I was tempted to do that, and only held off because it had been rated GA.

Personally, I don't see any point to the articles. Even 1 is not a coherent article: it's just a long summary of two elements which happen to be next to each other in the periodic chart. It might as well be an article "copper and zinc".

In any case, apart from 1 they were so poorly developed as to not warrant being separate articles just for that reason: the same info is now found in the period (periodic table) article, where it is better developed and easier to navigate.

Period 2: there had been a promise to turn it into a real article after a couple days in 2008, but nothing had happened since. Period 3: a stub, no discussion. Periods 4-6: not even stubs, just the definition of 'period' and a mirror of that row in the table. That is, nothing the reader hasn't already seen, and not even much of that. Period 7: a stub, no discussion. These periods are better developed as I've merged them into 'period' then they ever were as separate articles.

Anyway, if anyone wants to pick up on that unfulfilled promise to turn Period 2 into an encyclopedic article, or any of the other ones, there's nothing stopping them, even though I don't get the point of it. — kwami (talk) 19:34, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

Two points: First, silence does not indicate consensus. You asked on the talk page of Period (periodic table), which generated no discussion. Had you brought it up here, someone would have replied. Second, being poorly developed does not mean an article should become a redirect. Does it have the potential to become an article? If yes, keep it as such even if it's not very good. If no, make it a redirect until someone proves you wrong :P --Cryptic C62 · Talk 16:43, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

I agree with C62. Articles restored. --mav (reviews needed) 00:18, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

The discovery of a lithium deposit worth trillions or zillions was added to the article. The pegmatite Lithium deposits are known since long time and the USGS Non-Fuel Mineral Resource Assessment of Afghanistan 2007] states that pegmatite deposits are more expensive to mine and therefore the extraction from brine is economically favoured. So where is the relevance of this addition for the article? I will cut back the ting after the media hype is over.--Stone (talk) 14:07, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, I'd leave it a week or two and then silently put it to its death. Afghanistan is not a significant source of lithium, and is unlikely to become so in the near future. Physchim62 (talk) 14:25, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

The two largest producers in the US had no chance against the producers from South America, so why should Afghanistan have a chance? The demand is high but the mines in South America can deliver more than needed.--Stone (talk) 14:54, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

I reverted that once, but media hype is strong, and it is indeed better to wait a bit. My stance is we should document all significant deposits at least for the sake of geology, not just economy, i.e. extraction costs are not a reason for exclusion, but. Politics affects science, and thus I do not trust any newspaper on that right now. USGS should have their final say. Materialscientist (talk) 22:28, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

We should mention all extractable sources but give more space for sources that are either currently being exploited or are economically viable to extract. So far, it sounds like the reserves in Afghanistan are more strategic than practical given current lithium prices. All that could change if more easy to extract sources are exhausted or cut-off from the rest of the world though. A full paragraph for Afghanistan's reserves seems excessive. We should move that para to a more appropriate place such as Mining in Afghanistan or Natural resources in Afghanistan once the news dies down. I see no harm in providing extra info in the element article during the time a lot of people will be looking for it though. --mav (reviews needed) 13:26, 19 June 2010 (UTC)

Just a quick heads up: There are currently 15 featured pictures of elements. In no particular order:

Platinum	Tungsten	Tantalum	Niobium
Molybdenum	Iron	Chromium	Osmium
Copper	Vanadium	Gold	Silver
Bromine	Titanium	Bismuth

All are by Alchemist-hp.

In addition, we also have a diagram:

Eight Allotropes of Carbon

All the above are categorized under Wikipedia:Featured pictures/Sciences/Materials science, except for Platinum - which is from a natural source, and thus goes under Wikipedia:Featured pictures/Sciences/Geology.

The following are currently up for FP status, and all seem highly likely to pass.

Scandium	Yttrium	Hydrogen	Helium
Neon	Argon	Krypton	Xenon
Nitrogen

The gases are by commons:User:Jurii, the metals are again by Alchemist-hp.

If all pass - as seems likely - we will have 24 elements covered by a featured picture, out of about 81 which are practical to photograph (due to radioactivity). Adam Cuerden (talk) 06:23, 8 July 2010 (UTC)

is here. Please participate. Materialscientist (talk) 05:52, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

Yes, the word is spelled properly both ways. It refers to the summary lead-in of WP articles, of course.

The MoS suggests that ledes for longer articles (max length, say 50 to 70 kB) might be as long as 4 paragraphs. Since the paragraphs in ledes tend to be longer, that suggests perhaps 100 word paragraphs (5 sentences of perhaps 20 words each). That gives a lede length of 4 x 100 = 400 words. Or you can think of it as 20 sentences of 20 words, each a bullet point or "gem" telling the twenty things you wish all educated people knew about this element, if they didn't know anything else.

And indeed, for most of the elements of great importance (hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, iron) that's more or less about how long the lede is, now. Good!

The longest lede I've seen so far is helium's, which is nearly 700 words. Given the fact that helium is the second most common element in the universe and has all kinds of uses, it doesn't seem to be overlong.

For some of the other elements, a shorter lede is commensurate with a shorter article. The ledes for rare earth elements tend to be 150-200 words long, which is fine with me.

For other elements, there is some disparity, usually arising from differing editorial philosophies on what a lede should be, and do. I personally think that a lede for a maximally long element article (nitrogen or iodine for example) should be long, and should summarize the article as well as possible and in as much detail, as allowed in the space of 400 words. Presently silicon is 260 words, iodine is 300 words, and nitrogen--- an element of massive importance and considerable complexity and utility-- gets only 200 words of lede. It was once longer, but some editor, for some unknown reason just didn't like it at the size for other comparable element articles. To me, this is annoying. I'm not pointing any fingers (I can't remember who cut it, actually) but this should be discussed. I'd like to expand it to 400 words again, but not if it's going to start fights.

Could we get some consensus here? I'd like to propose ledes of 400 words at least for major elements with maximally long articles. Gold (for example) at 335 words is a bit funny, considering how much has been written and thought about the stuff through the ages.

What say you all? SBHarris 22:31, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

(Thinking loud) after I (re)write an article for DYK, I rewrite the lead too, summarizing there whatever important I find in the article, but I don't feel like having a fixed length of it - some articles are full of essential info, and some are so technical that I try to reduce the summary too. Article length also varies. Speaking of elements, there is a huge difference, say, between gases and lanthanides. Thus I would leave the lead length variable. Number of words depends on the writing style. Materialscientist (talk) 01:07, 19 July 2010 (UTC)

• (EC) Having a range of 200 to 400 words, with exceptions that go beyond both extremes, seems reasonable. My rule of thumb is to shoot for 100 words in the lede for every 2000 words in the body of the article with some inflation at the low end and deflation at the high end. But exactly how many words a lede (or article) needs should be primarily dictated by the topic, the interest in it, and amount of important info available about it. Good lede writing is more art than science though. --mav (reviews needed) 01:41, 19 July 2010 (UTC)

The infobox for each element, already has a section for the pronunciation. In my opinion, the articles will be improved, by removing the redundant pronunciation, from the opening paragraph, which reduce the readability, more than they add to the clarity. RevDan (talk) 21:01, 21 July 2010 (UTC)