User talk:Karlhahn/archive1

Material archived from my talk page (August-November 2006)

Karl Hahn (talk · contribs · logs)

Your edits to Sulfur trioxide

Hi! I saw your additions to sulfur trioxide. Good work. A nice addition, and nice info. Indeed, needs some references. About that, you name some references in one of your edit-summaries. To insert references, one of the methods is to use the <ref>whatever</ref>-method. If the article also has a references section with the <references/> tag in it, referencing will be automatically done. If you use the same reference again, the first one should get a <ref name=whatever>whatever</ref>, the second one can than just be written down as <ref name=whatever/> (not the / at the end of the ref). Works quite easy.

Hope to see you around. We need some people adding info to chemical pages. Many are just stubs. So, keep up the good work! --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 19:00, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

Hey Karlhahn. Feel free to continue to work on SO3. Your work was great. I am still tweaking this thing. I just did not want readers to confuse molecular structure and crystal structure (deals with packing, although chemists use the term loosely). Also the implied thermodynamics were weird, until one understands that the "stable" forms are not SO3 but a partial hydrate. I have been reading on the same topic. Keep up the good work, we need people who know chemistry.--Smokefoot 22:25, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

Iodine

What I asserted was that it could not exist as a liquid at standard conditions ( 1 bar absolute and 0 C), though I could have said room temperture. The melting point is quite a bit higher. Badocter 20:39, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Sandbox

Hi there. I've moved the article you created KarlsSandbox to a user subpage for you because personal sandboxes shouldn't be created in the main article space. Your sandbox is now located at User:Karlhahn/KarlsSandbox. --Casper2k3 12:38, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

That's no problem. "Brain fart's" are quite common with me as well lol! --Casper2k3 12:47, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

Calcium carbonate

Nice work on clarifying the solubility stuff, thanks for that. I hope to do a major article expansion/rewrite on calcium carbonate early next year (I did some of these in summer 2005 on sodium sulfate, hydrogen peroxide, sulfuric acid and sodium hydroxide). Would you collaborate with me on that work? Thanks again, Walkerma 04:18, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks! I might even get into it sooner than January if you're wanting to start sooner! I'd like to think hard about this, but a quick glance suggests:

• History - limekilns and the like, very ancient industry, one of the first major chemical industries, with CaCO₃ as the starting point. I think the monks in 600AD in my part of England were making it. Deserves at least a small section, I think, and maybe a nice pic.
• Occurrence - turn into some prose, describing where in the world these minerals occur. How is it mined? Which are the major producers (companies, countries)? Briefly describe its formation (from shellfish?).
• Uses - Large already, but this section could cover even more - it's used a lot! Some things may need to be spun off into sub-articles if they get big, or tied in with existing articles that cover the topic in more detail. I'd like to see more coverage of the role of CaCO₃ in making steel, which must consume millions of tonnes/year. I may be able to dig up something on the history/agricultural chemistry of CaCO₃ and the soil - I have a copy of Justus Liebig's pioneering book in this field (from 1842). The soils WikiProject may help there too.
• Equilibria sections (calcination, solubility) - make these more readable, less "dry." We need to put things in terms that ordinary people can understand, put things in context, and show how these are used in practice (or seen in nature).
• Biological stuff - not my field, but how do shellfish produce the stuff? What enzymes are involved? Sounds interesting to me!
• Chemistry - I'm sure I can expand this a bit too.

Regarding the geological test, I may check with our geology department to see what they say about analysis. For a chemist, fizzing with HCl is not a valid test, but it may be appropriate in geology. Unless there are specific chemical tests for identifying CaCO₃, I don't think we try to cover that aspect - unless you think otherwise. And please add to the list! BTW, I think I saw a list of the top 1000 or 2000 articles in Wikipedia (in 2004) in terms of Google traffic, and I seem to recall this article was on the list. Don't quote me on that, but I think it is important enough to be worth our time! Thanks, Walkerma 04:27, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

Surface tension

Yes sure, I can explain everything a bit more and derive the formulae, where should we keep the conversation, in my talk page or in yours?? I really feel that with a little effort and maybe someone else's contributions we could take surface tension up to the good article condition. Knights who say ni 08:56, 16 October 2006 (UTC) 08:55, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

It's not easy for me writing decent text explaining things, pls have a look at my sandbox and give me some feedback on the thermodynamic stuff. I have prepared a table with the surface tension values of some interfaces, it's there too. Knights who say ni 22:10, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

O_O that's much too much physics for me, but it looks great. The thermodynamic thing is more or less finished in the surface tension article (I took it away from my sandbox) and I agree with you that the caption in the diagram of the floating needle is a bit too long. I think the article still needs rephrasing and organising a bit, and splitting as well, but that's on the way. Ask me if you get stuck or want to know if something is understandable as is. I'll keep an eye on the surface tension article, but for the moment I am putting my efforts into physical chemistry and chemistry concepts. I feel it is one of the least developed areas in wiki and no one seems to put any effort there.Knights who say ni 20:31, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

I just had a look at the supplement page you're preparing, and it looks great, but I feel that the heat of vaporisation part, although not wrong at all isn't really adding any info. I mean the numbers aer correct but surface tension is, as all thermodynamic ones, a macroscopic magnitude and it doesn't make much sense talking about drops the size of one or two molecules because at that scale it's quantum and not continuum mechanics at all (i will add some examples of that to the therm part)Knights who say ni 17:06, 1 November 2006 (UTC)