geni wrote:
On 07/03/2008, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
geni wrote:
On 07/03/2008, Kurt Maxwell Weber kmw@armory.com wrote:
*"31 million CAS registry numbers have been allocated for chemical
compounds."
We could do with some lists, but an article on every compound is probably too much, when so little can be said for so many of them.
No, it's not. If it exists, it's a legitimate subject for an article.
How much do you know about modern organic synthesis?
A person interested in astronomy would probably have limited knowledge about organic synthesis. He would go ahead with adding stellar objects without spending much time on organic chemicals. He is able to admit that he knows nothing about organic chemicals, trusts that others are better versed in that subject, and lets them work in their own chosen field. He does not limit his world view to what he can see from his closed box.
He peers out of his telescope and sees stellar objects named organic chemistry, pottery shards, and pop culture and does not pretend that he can reach out and affect the motion of those stellar objects.
The problem is that due to modern organic techniques it is quite possible to create very large numbers of chemicals in a very short length of time. This is generaly used in combination with very narrow screening so unless you think "Chemical X does not inhibit cell function y" is a valid article you can't write articles on every single chemical. What you instead do is white about chemical families. You start with say bycyclo[2,2,2]octane then you have an article about the bycyclo[2,2,2]octane derivatives that contain biphenyls and then if there is enough info derivative of those. What you don't attempt is to write an separate article for every single chemical.
Trust me, I'm not about to start writing up chemicals. I don't know enough about them to work on that, and I need to trust others. Chemicals which are only theoretical possibilities without any record of their having ever been synthesized probably do not merit inclusion. One can hypothesize that a basic carbon chain can include an infinitely long carbon string, but beyond some point it's only make-believe.
Ec