...it cites us as explanatory references:
Our physics articles are obviously of citable quality now.
On 6/30/07, Earle Martin wikipedia@downlode.org wrote:
...it cites us as explanatory references:
Our physics articles are obviously of citable quality now.
-- Earle Martin http://downlode.org/ http://purl.org/net/earlemartin/
Wow, that's a new high for Wikipedia, sorta, and a new low for particle physics, my apologies to all particle physicists on list for not alluding to infinite boundaries and all the rest.
KP
K P schreef:
On 6/30/07, Earle Martin wikipedia@downlode.org wrote:
...it cites us as explanatory references:
Our physics articles are obviously of citable quality now.
Wow, that's a new high for Wikipedia, sorta, and a new low for particle physics, my apologies to all particle physicists on list for not alluding to infinite boundaries and all the rest.
1) That is not particle physics. It is theoretical quantum field theory. Completely different subject, and hard to see why you would confuse those two.
2) Wikipedia is quite good if you want to get a general overview of a subject in physics; perhaps the best online resource covering the whole of physics. Cites of Wikipedia in an introductory part of an online article (where the ability of linking is a bonus) are not that surprising.
3) Registering a domain name for your new physics theory is generally a sign that you cannot get your theory published in a regular channel. Also, Wikipedia is cited all over the place, which seems to indicate that the author is not familiar with how much his collegue theoretical quantum field theorists know. Conclusion: the page looks like the work of a well-willing amateur, not a professional physicist. (But I cannot judge the scientific validity of the page.
On behalf of all particle physicists on the list, Eugene
On 6/30/07, Eugene van der Pijll eugene@vanderpijll.nl wrote:
K P schreef:
On 6/30/07, Earle Martin wikipedia@downlode.org wrote:
...it cites us as explanatory references:
Our physics articles are obviously of citable quality now.
Wow, that's a new high for Wikipedia, sorta, and a new low for particle physics, my apologies to all particle physicists on list for not alluding to infinite boundaries and all the rest.
- That is not particle physics. It is theoretical quantum field theory.
Completely different subject, and hard to see why you would confuse those two.
On behalf of all particle physicists on the list, Eugene
It may be hard to see how I would, but the article on "Unified Field Theories" does, and it's hard to read any further once they do. And how could I resist lobbing such a pretty one to any particle physicists out there?
Wikipedia covers theoretical physics fairly well, and applications of particle physics, too. But falls down on a lot of the related math, not being able to explain the math, simply showing the math, and on technological applications of physics in areas outside of particle physics.
On behalf of those who wouldn't know a Unified Field Theory if one fell out of an apple tree onto their head,
KP
K P schreef:
how could I resist lobbing such a pretty one to any particle physicists out there?
I can understand the feeling, but of all scientists, we particle physicists have the [[Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider#Fears among the public|deadliest weaponry]].
Don't mess with us.
Eugene
On 30/06/07, Eugene van der Pijll eugene@vanderpijll.nl wrote:
- Registering a domain name for your new physics theory is generally a
sign that you cannot get your theory published in a regular channel. Also, Wikipedia is cited all over the place, which seems to indicate that the author is not familiar with how much his collegue theoretical quantum field theorists know. Conclusion: the page looks like the work of a well-willing amateur, not a professional physicist. (But I cannot judge the scientific validity of the page.
Yes - the only Google hit for "Nonlocal Medium Theory" suggests that the author of this, erm, theory, has been trying to promote it for a decade or so. Thankfully a few years later Wikipedia arrived, and all those citations make the page look so much more convincing....
Earle (only a second year undergraduate physicist)
Citing Wikipedia articles in a physics paper should definitively give some points in Baez' famous evaluation scale[1]. On a first quick look the author at least refrained from (or was stopped) adding his insights to Wikipedia.
Interestingly some new papers have started using physicist's blog entries as references. But at least that's stuff, not everybody can edit.
BTW, http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0512053 is another example with heavy Wikipedia citing.
Regards, Peter Jacobi [[User:Pjacobi]]
== References == [1] http://www.math.ucr.edu/home/baez/crackpot.html
On Sat, Jun 30, 2007 at 10:34:54PM +0100, Earle Martin wrote:
...it cites us as explanatory references:
Our physics articles are obviously of citable quality now.
Maybe they are, but I have to express some dissappointment about our Physics articles. Many of them are over-complex and in particular do not lead into the complexity with a simple introduction so the reader who knows nothing about the topic will at least get an idea of what the article is about.
As a Physical Chemist or Chemical Physicist, although my degrees are in chemistry and I worked in university chemical departments all my career, I find many of the articles in the border area between chemistry and physics give the physics emphasis more the chemists. That emphasis is more mathematically and more rigorous. It is therefore easy to see why that emphasis dominates. It is hard to argue with an editor who says that some explanation has to be made rigorous as otherwise it is incorrect. Unfortunately this occurs in articles on topics that are actually more used by chemists than physicists, I am thinking of topics in thermodynamics and quantum chemistry for example. I find the attempt to make such articles clearer and give the information in part in a way that chemists will understand it, to be a very frustrating and exhausting process and I often back out and leave an article for a while.
This is an issue that really needs to be addressed as physicists are still very mathematically able, but chemists are increasingly less mathematically able. My experience of teaching physical chemistry for 40 years is that the level of mathematically background in students has decreased. There is plenty of evidence for this, not least of which is the increasing number of textbooks that cover physical chemistry in a less mathematically rigorous fashion. For example I doubt whether more than 1% of undergraduates understand the idea of exact differentials or have been seriously taught them. 30 years ago all chemistry majors would have been introduced to them in a thorough fashion, although as always many would have promptly forgotten all about them. At the same time, chemists are using very complex computer based tools such as ab initio quantum chemistry. They do so without going through all the mathematical derivations and theorems, but they need to know the basis of the methods and their limitations. These can be completely lost in the mathematical complexity in a article that is dominated by the physics emphasis, even when the method is much more used by chemists than physicists.
-- Earle Martin http://downlode.org/ http://purl.org/net/earlemartin/
On Sun, 1 Jul 2007 08:58:18 +1000, Brian Salter-Duke b_duke@bigpond.net.au wrote:
Maybe they are, but I have to express some dissappointment about our Physics articles. Many of them are over-complex and in particular do not lead into the complexity with a simple introduction so the reader who knows nothing about the topic will at least get an idea of what the article is about.
This is certainly true of some of the more obscure topics. I am reasonably well educated (good honours degree in electrical engineering), but have found at least half a dozen articles on physics topics that were close to unintelligible.
Some of this is due to the articles I get drawn to: in most cases it's because some loon is trying to rewrite the article to more accurately explain this Great New Way of looking at it that the journals inexplicably fail to follow up. If you get my drift.
Guy (JzG)
On Sun, Jul 01, 2007 at 10:42:06AM +0100, Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
On Sun, 1 Jul 2007 08:58:18 +1000, Brian Salter-Duke b_duke@bigpond.net.au wrote:
Maybe they are, but I have to express some dissappointment about our Physics articles. Many of them are over-complex and in particular do not lead into the complexity with a simple introduction so the reader who knows nothing about the topic will at least get an idea of what the article is about.
This is certainly true of some of the more obscure topics. I am reasonably well educated (good honours degree in electrical engineering), but have found at least half a dozen articles on physics topics that were close to unintelligible.
Some of this is due to the articles I get drawn to: in most cases it's because some loon is trying to rewrite the article to more accurately explain this Great New Way of looking at it that the journals inexplicably fail to follow up. If you get my drift.
I get your drift and this can be a problem. However, I suspect the problem is that many physicists think rigour is more important than being understood. Just my POV i guess. I can point ot articles that have just slowly been made unintelligible by people whose motives are pure.
Guy (JzG)
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
On 7/1/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net wrote:
On Sun, 1 Jul 2007 08:58:18 +1000, Brian Salter-Duke b_duke@bigpond.net.au wrote:
Maybe they are, but I have to express some dissappointment about our Physics articles. Many of them are over-complex and in particular do not lead into the complexity with a simple introduction so the reader who knows nothing about the topic will at least get an idea of what the article is about.
This is certainly true of some of the more obscure topics. I am reasonably well educated (good honours degree in electrical engineering), but have found at least half a dozen articles on physics topics that were close to unintelligible.
Some of this is due to the articles I get drawn to: in most cases it's because some loon is trying to rewrite the article to more accurately explain this Great New Way of looking at it that the journals inexplicably fail to follow up. If you get my drift.
Guy (JzG)
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG
This does happen, but I don't think this is Brian's overall concern. There are many concepts in physics which can be explained quite directly, even the most seemingly advanced concepts--and without the math, and to a general audience. The bulk of the physics articles do this well. I love math, but when I want to understand something I don't go to math first.
I got to spend a full day with Helen Quinn many years ago, all day following her around, listening to her talk about physics, peppering her with a zillion questions on every topic in the known universe (her known universe, not something so small as mine). Without using mathematics or analogies, and she didn't spend much time with diagrams, either, she can directly explain any concept in physics.
Okay, you're snickering that I want to apply the "Helen Quinn" standard to Wikipedia physics articles, but in fact, many of articles are quite good. It is only in certain areas of physics where we fall down. Some of this is what Guy is saying, where a less mainstream idea is being placed on Wikipedia as a fully accepted theory, but I think these get taken care of.
Others are just the overly mathematical approach to physics without any idea that the underlying concepts should be explained without math, and then the mathematical idea developed. The editors who use this approach see the mathematics, but don't appreciate any interference that requires more than math (the scream, "it's rigorous!")
An introductory, straight-forward, development and explanation of concepts is important even to physics articles, even to math articles.
Thanks for the laugh, Eugene.
KP
on 7/1/07 7:09 PM, K P at kpbotany@gmail.com wrote:
On 7/1/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net wrote:
On Sun, 1 Jul 2007 08:58:18 +1000, Brian Salter-Duke b_duke@bigpond.net.au wrote:
Maybe they are, but I have to express some dissappointment about our Physics articles. Many of them are over-complex and in particular do not lead into the complexity with a simple introduction so the reader who knows nothing about the topic will at least get an idea of what the article is about.
This is certainly true of some of the more obscure topics. I am reasonably well educated (good honours degree in electrical engineering), but have found at least half a dozen articles on physics topics that were close to unintelligible.
Some of this is due to the articles I get drawn to: in most cases it's because some loon is trying to rewrite the article to more accurately explain this Great New Way of looking at it that the journals inexplicably fail to follow up. If you get my drift.
Guy (JzG)
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG
This does happen, but I don't think this is Brian's overall concern. There are many concepts in physics which can be explained quite directly, even the most seemingly advanced concepts--and without the math, and to a general audience. The bulk of the physics articles do this well. I love math, but when I want to understand something I don't go to math first.
I got to spend a full day with Helen Quinn many years ago, all day following her around, listening to her talk about physics, peppering her with a zillion questions on every topic in the known universe (her known universe, not something so small as mine). Without using mathematics or analogies, and she didn't spend much time with diagrams, either, she can directly explain any concept in physics.
Okay, you're snickering that I want to apply the "Helen Quinn" standard to Wikipedia physics articles, but in fact, many of articles are quite good. It is only in certain areas of physics where we fall down. Some of this is what Guy is saying, where a less mainstream idea is being placed on Wikipedia as a fully accepted theory, but I think these get taken care of.
Others are just the overly mathematical approach to physics without any idea that the underlying concepts should be explained without math, and then the mathematical idea developed. The editors who use this approach see the mathematics, but don't appreciate any interference that requires more than math (the scream, "it's rigorous!")
An introductory, straight-forward, development and explanation of concepts is important even to physics articles, even to math articles.
And to the human condition.
Thanks for this, KP
Marc Riddell