Talk:Physics/Archive 8

Archive 5

Archive 6

Archive 7

Archive 8

Archive 9

Welcome

I have just reverted a good faith edit by an anon. editor. First, anon, I encourage you to take a user name so that we might talk on the same 'wavelength'. But however you wish to contribute, it would be good to cite some sources for reasoning. The mechanics for this is the <ref>Note: your note here (with page numbers please).</ref>, which then appears in the <references/> section. You are welcome to add your content with a good citation from a respected source. Once you have a source to cite, I personally have found it useful to use the {{harvnb|Physicist|Year|PageNumber}} template, where the citation is of the form {{Citation|first=Good|last=Physicist|year=1905|title=On a Heuristic Viewpoint Concerning the Production and Transformation of Light|journal=Annalen der Physik|volume=17|pages=132–148}}. --Ancheta Wis (talk) 01:22, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

Torsian field

Hi there,

I did not have time to read guidelines, I hope I don't offend any one. Can anyone tell a little more about this. I am interested in Remote viewing and one of the fields it mentions is "torsian". Not sure how to get reply so:

Cheers —Preceding unsigned comment added by 195.194.75.209 (talk) 11:46, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

Yes it's called pseudoscience. They make up phrases for non-existant phenomena and use buzz words such as quantum to make it sound as if it were real science. My personal suggestion is that you completely ignore this and concentrate on reality. Torsian is likely a misspelling of torsion maybe that'll help... 62.31.149.64 (talk) 15:40, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

See Torsion field. --A r m y 1 9 8 7 ! ! ! 12:07, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

Criticism section proposed

The article should include criticism. Modern physics seems to stagnate, there have been nothing really new and groundbreaking since year 1947 of the transistor. Especially if we compare with biology/medicine, the current hot topic, phsyics does not seem to bring a good return of investment. Whatever we have today, like CPU are merely works of engineering reusing pre-1948 basic knowledge with great refinement, but it has no connection to basic physics science achieved since then.

Modern phisycs equipment like giant accelerator rings costs billions to make, yet results are nowhere near as revolutionary as achieved for relativity and quantum mechanics using little more than chalk and blackboard. Although there are still world-famous celebrities in physics, like Stephen Hawking, their contribution is not as significant as Einstein's or Schrodinger's were, at least not for the ordinary laymen.

What is wrong with modern physics? Lack of prominent individuals, lack of good leadership or have we simply reached the limit of our human brains and only a megacomputer AI could create a successful "theory of all"? What is the future of physics?

All these issues could be addressed under a separate criticism section. 82.131.210.162 (talk) 18:04, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

Actually, revolutionary things are happening every day. I suggest you pick up a copy of Nature, Science, or the Physical Review rather than getting your physics from the newspaper.--Loodog (talk) 18:25, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

Or even our own History of physics article.--Loodog (talk) 03:48, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

Or Physics announced July 17, 2008 by the American Physical Society. There is also a free RSS feed of selected Physical Review Letters to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the publication. --Ancheta Wis (talk) 09:15, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

I'm also guessing you haven't heard of CERN, who is developing the new Large Hadron Collider, which will give us insight as to how the Big Bang occurred? Come on, this one was even in the newspaper! —Preceding unsigned comment added by ThunderBuns (talk • contribs) 19:43, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

String Theory

Where is it in the article?!!!!!!!!!! Yosef1987 (talk) 23:27, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

We need some physical predictions. Right now we have a theory which is the moral equivalent of the mythical central mountain of North America, whose rivers ran North, South, East and West, for reasons of symmetry. It took exploration to conclude that this mountain did not exist. --Ancheta Wis (talk) 17:16, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

But it is still a big part of theoretical physics and should be mentioned; could be wrong I dunno Yosef1987 (talk) 11:16, 23 August 2008 (UTC)

There are umpteen different proposed theories of quantum gravity, and illustrating them all in the article wouldn't be terribly useful, nor I can see any reason to choose any particular such theory. But a section about the most important unsolved problems in physics (and maybe a brief mention of the solutions of them considered more likely by mainstream scientists) should be added. --A r m y 1 9 8 7 ! !  14:07, 23 August 2008 (UTC)

What should we do with the development article?

It hasn't been edited since June. Should we replace the current Physics article with that one? --A r m y 1 9 8 7 ! !  13:24, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

...but apparently that article had no substantial edits since September 2007. I'm removing the mention of that article on the top of this page. --A r m y 1 9 8 7 ! !  19:03, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

Unfortunately, that article was better than this one in many aspects. I'll try to integrate stuff from there to here. --A r m y 1 9 8 7 ! !  19:10, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

OK No I liked the old version before you did the BRD; it states in the BRD that people may STRONGLY DISAGREE with you and I know at least I do.

If you want to merge that article into the original please just add the additional content you created; don't delete the entire article.

and please do not remove the lovely little meissner effect picture, first there was the copyright issue, now this--GlasGhost (talk) 18:40, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Well, I expected that someone would revert that change, and I was somewhat surprised that nobody did. (BTW, I created no additional content myself, the new page was taken from Talk:Physics/wip/development_article. The last revision of the article before my change is http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Physics&oldid=235648606. --A r m y 1 9 8 7 ! ! ! 18:58, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

I propose replacing the Hydrogen orbitals rendering with the Meissner effect image. --Ancheta Wis (talk) 00:54, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Ok, thanks for putting the meissner image back up. I have also come to a conlcusion that you could name the old article; "Branches of physics"

and the new article preceded by an arbitrary un-collapsed list of physics garble; "actual talk about what physics is, followed by insert history of physics here"

I hope we can some how condense, keep, merge the old stuff with the new stuff, I'm gonna do something interesting and put the old article at the location of the article in development and see where we can go from there.--GlasGhost (talk) 01:47, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

Unintended anthropromorphism / hint of 'intelligent design'?

I was drawn to copyedit the section 'Scope and Goals' as the concept of the Universe making a choice didn't seem appropriate phraseology in the following: "As an example, we can consider asking the following question on the nature of the Universe itself: how many dimensions do we need? Given that we know the Universe to consist of four dimensions (three space dimensions, and one time dimension), we can also ask why the universe picked those particular numbers: why not have four space dimensions? The fact that a choice was made out of a possibility of many means that questions like these fall under the scope of physics."

The new text I posted at 21:28, 23 September 2008 while accidentally not logged in (sorry folks - 82.99.29.112 was me sitting in a hotel in Stockholm) got reverted almost immediately by Vsmith. No problem with that in principle (though some reasons that would contribute to a debate on improving this important article would be helpful, rather than an uncommented revert). However, now the phraseology that inspired me to start copy editing has returned. I'll just leave this hanging for now and invite comments on whether the 'Scope and Goals' section does need a re-edit along the lines I suggested. Hugh Mason (talk • contribs 23:04, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

The editor who wrote those lines is a professional physicist; what he was trying to convey in non-technical language was the solution of a functional equation; given $10^{120}$ possibilities, collapse into a solution which is 3-dimensional in space and 1-dimensional in time, thus guaranteeing the form of the law of universal gravitation, etc., etc. --Ancheta Wis (talk) 00:52, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

The pathetic fallacy is common in explanations of physics without any ID implication. It makes the language more interesting and everybody knows what's meant. Compare:

1. "we can also ask why the universe picked those particular numbers" to "we can also ask why the universe wound up with those particular numbers".
2. "The fact that a choice was made out of a possibility of many means that questions like these fall under the scope of physics" to "The fact that one set of parameters resulted out of a possibility of many means that questions like these fall under the scope of physics."

Something's missing from the non-pathetic fallacied examples.--Loodog (talk) 02:40, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Thanks Ancheta Wis and Loodog. That's fascinating. In a previous career I was a full time professional science communicator making TV documentaries for the BBC and Discovery etc for ten years. While I am well aware of anthropromorphism in popular science communication (I'm an old hand at it myself), I hadn't realised that John 'OMG my wife's got pubic hair' Ruskin had coined a phrase for it ;-) My reading (and I may be wrong) of the article on the pathetic fallacy here in Wikipedia is that that its widespread use is now outdated. For what it's worth (and it is only my post-professional opinion) I find the pathetic fallacy a slightly patronising conceit but, if the concensus amongst WP authors and readers out there is that I'm wrong, let's go with it. Comments please. Hugh Mason (talk • contribs 06:46, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Hugh Mason, thank you for your edits to the article. They are welcome. If you have a way for the article to become more accessible, perhaps you can add to the article, or to the talk page if other issues impede the readership of the article. --Ancheta Wis (talk) 16:07, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

I too have some problems with this section as written. Firstly the anthropomorphism is inappropriate in this context as it can lead to misunderstandings, I am not wholly against it but in a section about scope and goals it can easily be taken too literally.

Similar misunderstandings may also be provoked by the use of terms such as 'understand'. Physics is about giving an accurate (agrees with experiment) quantitative description of the world. It does not address fundamental issues of 'why' (from a philosophical or even religious perspective) things are how they are. Used of the word 'understand can imply to some that physics does attempt to address issues that belong in the realm of philosophy or religion. Martin Hogbin (talk) 10:42, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Yes; physics is about precision and accuracy, which are not exactly the same concepts. But definition is fundamental. It is possible to understand or define something precisely without necessarily knowing a numerical value, merely knowing its type (the unit of measure) for a scalar value. At times, the simple order of magnitude of a scalar number is great progress for our understanding. So for example, the phenomenological parameters — mass, charge, spin, isospin, etc. — in total seem to characterize our understanding of the universe, but the observation that they are mass nouns tells us that something is being swept under the rug when we characterize the laws of nature. As we become aware that there is something else we do not understand, in the march Inward Bound (Abraham Pais' history of physics in the twentieth century), new classes of object are being postulated, sought, and sometimes discovered. --Ancheta Wis (talk) 16:07, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Martin Hogbin, thank you; please feel free to contribute as you see fit. --Ancheta Wis (talk) 16:07, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

clarification tag

On the clarification tag for Oldest science: astronomy, Oldest writings: mathematics -

The section notes that the astronomical data for the positions of the stars and the motion of Earth is the oldest known data, dating back 5000 years, easily the oldest scientific data. The clarifyme tag, I believe, applies to mathematical notations such as the Ishango bone, dating back 20000 years, while other bones have marks possibly twice as old. If the second sentence (about mathematics) were dropped, then the tag could be dropped. --Ancheta Wis (talk) 10:45, 18 October 2008 (UTC)

Per WP:MOS I am dropping the 2nd sentence mentioned above and consolidating into 4 paragraphs. --Ancheta Wis (talk) 13:26, 19 October 2008 (UTC)

Broken link/canceled page

The link on external link, on the little rectangle in which is written:_{"Wikibooks' Wikiversity has more about this subject:School of Physics"} seems to be broken or the page was canceled. --Aushulz (talk) 00:17, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

Etymology

• I think because of the broadness of the topic, you should include the etymology...and how the world view from ancient greek is evolving into modern ones..thank you.che (talk) 08:45, 2 November 2008 (UTC)
  • There was an Etymology section, but it consisted of a single sentence explaining the Greek translation and it dosn't seem like theres much else to say here.(the relation to the Greeks is already discussed in the History section). In the interest of following the Manual of Style and keeping the article concise, I removed the section. The etymology is explained in the lead, and interested readers can click on Physis for more info. Danski14^(talk) 20:33, 17 December 2008 (UTC)
• Another thing is if you refer to the book..Physics is not just study about matter and the motion..it is the interaction between matter and energy that counts..che (talk) 08:48, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

Perimiter Institute External Links

There has been a lot of back-and-forth edit warring on whether links to the Perimiter Institute should be included on this page, followed by a series of templated warning messages on the talk page of the user who added them. But I don't see any discussion by anyone on whether the links are appropriate or not -- it's not at all obvious that they should be removed, because they do seem to contain some interesting resources on physics. I do suspect the ultimate decision will be that the links aren't critical enough to include -- after all, there are a lot of outreach pages in the world, and we don't want our links too long -- but I think the user adding the links deserves more of an explanation. -- SCZenz (talk) 15:29, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Adding the link to the external links sections seems to be this account's single-purpose, so there definitely is a conflict of interest here. See this evidence: "Position: Marketing/Special Projects Manager" - DVdm (talk) 17:26, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Still, I'd encourage everyone to put a little more effort into explanation. Science outreach, including promoting scientific institutions and the resources they provide, is a good thing, and I'm involved in it myself. It don't think the user in question is trying to abuse Wikipedia, she's just not familiar with our rules and culture. Reading through the templated warnings, I think what the user has not yet received is a personal explanation that explains why we don't like what she's trying to do; she deserves one. -- SCZenz (talk) 18:16, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps in the proper context, links to relevant parts residing on this site can be acceptable through inline references, but as this is a commercial site (with marketing managers and all that), i.m.o. a bare link to the home page should be kept out of the external links section of any article. Or am I missing something here? DVdm (talk) 19:54, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

You're absolutely missing something, yes. Take a look at Perimeter Institute; they're an academic institute, not a "commercial site." And again, I want to emphasize that even if they links aren't appropriate, I still urge everyone to explain better. -- SCZenz (talk) 20:28, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Using a marketing manager to add links suggests otherwise, but YMMV. DVdm (talk) 21:59, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

I would agree that this does not appear to be a commercial site. However, the editor in question has added the link to 16 articles-- there certainly appears to be an intent to promote the institution, which suggests that the links have not been added with the primary intent to improve the articles they have been added to. Note that the very first warning to the user indicates that links should not be "used for advertising or promotion". In my experience, users with this kind of edit history almost never turn out to be interested in anything other than promoting their institution, especially when they simply readd their links without attempting discussion with the removing editor.

So sure, you could try a lengthier explanation of the problem, and sure, some of these links might pass muster in some articles, but I, for one, don't have the time or inclination (or even expertise) to examine each one. I'd say the best option to present the spammer editor would be to discuss it on the article's talk page, as was suggested on the second talk page message (and apparently ignored). I certainly don't think the editor should be allowed to readd the links directly, as per wp:coi.

Finally, while "promoting scientific institutions and the resources they provide, [may be] a good thing", using Wikipedia for promotion is definitely not a good thing. -- Mwanner | Talk 22:38, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Opps . . . SCZenz was absolutely correct about my lack of knowledge regarding the uses of editing and adding links and although I am "Marketing Manager" for Perimeter Institute i am really more a communications person. I was not meaning to use Wikipedia for any other motive except that I was enthusiastic about being able to finally contribute something to Wikipedia after reading through some of the modern physics sites. I also hadn't seen many of the templated warnings until today so missed them as I was re-entering the links. I apologize for this and am better educated now about the culture, etc. Yes, Perimeter is a not-for-profit organization with the mandate to educate the public about Modern Physics. Perhaps the better approach would be for me to use my expertise in the field to enhance some of the modern physics topics on wikipedia and will do that in future. Great work everyone in examining this that's why this is the best site. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Stsang (talk • contribs) 19:32, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Ok, good luck and please accept my apologies for the biting. Cheers, DVdm (talk) 19:56, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

HyperPhysics at Georgia State University

I would like to see "HyperPhysics" the Georgia State University web site added to the external links. (http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/Hbase/hframe.html) A search of Wikipedia does reveal that an article to HyperPhysics is included in the encyclopedia. I would like a link added to the general physics page as I find it has much to offer in providing understanding and insight to the topic of physics. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Dogsinlove (talk • contribs)

Agree - Although wikipedia is not a collection of external links, I guess this site qualifies as acceptable. AFAIAC, go ahead. - DVdm (talk) 16:24, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

I am happy enough with that, HP was one of the earlier and generally well regarded physics websites on the web, it would seem to deserve a link from the article given how detailed it is, with its mind-map style structure fitting in well as a physics resource readers might like. Be Bold and add it! SFC9394 (talk) 16:27, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

Replaced a broken link with the recommendation. --Ancheta Wis (talk) 17:47, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

Image of dynamical equations

The article contains an image showing Newton's dynamical equations (usually called Newton's Laws of Motion). According to the image the first law is p=mv. I have never seen this definition of the first law anywhere. In fact every other source gives a completely unrelated definition for the first law. The image is clearly wrong. I tried to remove the image (with an explantion) but the change was reverted. Does anyone else agree that the image should be removed? 80.221.37.96 (talk) 21:40, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

It comes from Sander Bais (2005), The Equations: icons of knowledge p. 23 ISBN 0-674-01967-9 Harvard Univ. Press

Bais is professor of physics at Univ. of Amsterdam. --Ancheta Wis (talk) 23:59, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

Ok. Still, I could give 10 sources that gives another definition of the first law. I guess I should check how it is given in Principia. 80.221.37.96 (talk) 06:14, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

It's not Newton's first law of motion. Newton was standing on the shoulders of Galileo for the first law; Galileo was fighting Aristotle at this time in the development of physics, and the definition of momentum that Newton gave (labelled 1 in the image) is actually buried in Galileo's writings. User:Krea states it nicely: Newton's first law shows that we can find a rest frame. See D'Alembert's principle for more on this. To show that Galileo understood the issue of rest frames, see Galileo (1632), Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, the Second Day, where Salviati discusses the motion of a ship's cargo from Venice to Aleppo: "If, from the cargo in the ship, a sack were shifted from a chest one single inch, this alone would be more of a movement for it than the two-thousand-mile journey made by all of them together." --Ancheta Wis (talk) 13:17, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

But isn't it terribly misleading to put it next to NII and NIII in that case? It certainly gives the impression that it's supposed to show NI. And why does it link to the laws of motion if the image isn't supposed to represent them? 80.221.37.96 (talk) 15:58, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

I agree with the comments about the image of the dynamical equations. I think its very misleading in equating them to Newton's 3 Laws, especially since it links to Newton's 3 law of motion. Also, this may be just me, but does anyone else think that the notation of the 3 laws could be improved as well? I am quite fond of the dot notation myself in derivations, but I think it is more suggestive to include it in the d(mv)/dt form, especially consider it is an equation of motion. Also, on the classical mechanics pages for wikipedia I think that the arrow notation is more common for vectors rather than bold typeface, so that might be a nice change too. Dgiraffes (talk) 07:09, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

My edits

Some of the editors around here may have noticed that the "theories" and "research fields" sections are back. I merged these in from the development article (which is now actually a copy of the physics article from a few months ago, if I understand correctly). In the process I had to trim them down to remove redundant or unnecessary information. I was appalled at the state the physics article had degraded to, with sloppy prose and lots of trivia and bias. There were also some serious errors, such as the assertion that Dirac was responsible for QED, and that all of statistical mechanics derives from the modeling of atoms as hard spheres. I did cut out a few things, which I will justify here. The material cut out was seen as redundant or just poorly written, and was in the interest of making the page more readable and not overly long.

• The last sentences of the lead were removed, one talked about theory vs experiment and seemed redundent with the paragraph below, and was horribly written (see [1]), as well as a random blurb on the virtues of electron miscrocopy.
• The few sentences on "how many dimensions are there"? from the introduction. These seemed to give a biased view... it is very interesting, but gives an inaccurate view up front, because very few physicists are actually concerned with such abstractions. Also, the concept is already mentioned in the section on theorists, where it says "Beyond the known universe, the field of theoretical physics also deals with hypothetical issues,[11] such as parallel universes, a multiverse, and higher dimensions. Physicists speculate on these possibilities, and from them, hypothesize theories."
• Etymology section : as I mentioned above, this consisted of a single sentence, and it didn't appear there was much else to say. Per the manual of style, it was too short to have its own section. The Etymology is explained in the lead, and readers can click physis for more info.
• Applied physics list -- the list was removed as un-sightly, redundant, and as I understand, lists are generally frowned upon. If readers click on Applied Physics, there is a nice handy list there. A lot of the things on that list were questionable, also. I do think this section needs work still.
• The picture of the Hexagonal Cloud on Saturn was removed, in lieu of new pictures.

The tables on theories and research areas are now hidden. I remember these were removed in the past as too unencyclopedic. I think having them hidden is a good trade off. I also corrected a lot of grammar errors and added a few new tidbits of information. The main thing still needing copyediting is the history section. Danski14^(talk) 18:56, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

Good improvements. (Or is it un-unimprovements?) The history section still sucks, and is still too long, which were good reasons for removing it a couple years ago. Why the hell is there a section in an encyclopedia titled "Physics is quantitative"? 68.39.126.203 (talk) 17:15, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

1st sentence of article

The first sentence currently reads:

Physics (Greek: physis – φύσις meaning "nature") is the natural science which examines basic concepts such as mass, charge, matter and its motion and all that derives from these, such as energy, force, and spacetime.

I Don't understand how space or time is a derivative of matter and motion as; matter is described as "anything that has mass and takes up space" and motion is controlled by time if time progresses things move according to time not themselves. Furthermore the word mass and charge are redundant as mass is part of the definition of matter, and charge is determined by the matter itself (number of protons and electrons).

I propose the new revision be as follows:

Physics (Greek: physis – φύσις meaning "nature") is the natural science which is the study of matter and its motion through spacetime and all that derives from these, such as energy and force. --Glas (talk) 22:48, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

Mass and charge are properties of matter, not definitions of it BTW. The "anything that has mass and takes up space" definition has to be revised in the face of quantum mechanics. However, that being said, I agree that the first sentence could be improved. I would tweak your sentence to this:

Physics (Greek: physis – φύσις meaning "nature") is the natural science which studies matter, its properties, its motion through spacetime, and all related concepts, such as energy and force.

Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 00:31, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

I think that is definitely an improvement. Matter (or mass-energy) does influence space-time of course, but it cannot be said spacetime derives from them. (the issues involved are rather subtle, but I believe the point stands: there are various solutions of GTR with an empty spacetime manifold, and one frequently talks of "empty space"). I don't understand how we could have had such an awkward statement in the lead. Danski14^(talk) 04:37, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

It appears we have a consensus--Glas(talk) Try my User skin 14:48, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

I am glad about this. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Maxkrueg 1 (talk • contribs) 11:27, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

Before it was screwed up

I'd just like to point the current editors of this article to a version that was in place before the disastrously awful decision to replace it with a "development" article. Here's what it looked like before that debacle:

Before "development"

Here's the nonsense that replaced a previously reasonable article:

After "development"

As you can see, the current article still suffers from many of the flaws of the "development" article. Someone should fix this. 68.39.124.195 (talk) 03:41, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

I actually saw this around the time this happened the guy who did this called this a Bold Revert Discuss or direct, look at my edits and you'll see me saving a lot of content other editors have made. A lot of that preious content eventually got moved to the Branches of physics article, I'm glad to see someone else noticed. Eventually a lot that new content was deleted as it was a basically a copy or rewording of the history of physics article.--Glas(talk)Nice User skin 03:49, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

Stuff that is missing in a lot of physics articles

As I've been reading a lot of the articles about physics, I have noticed that a lot of basic information is missing, or is hard to find without reading through the entire article. For example, in articles about physical quantities, I think some of the most important things are that it should be easy to find: 1. which sign (letter) is usually used for that physical quantity, 2. the unit of that physical quantity, 3. how to calculate its value as a function of other physical quantities (if possible) and 4. as many ways as possible that the physical quantity is commonly used in. Often when you open an article about a physical quantity, you are only looking to find one of the two or three first of these things. However, it is not always that easy to find, if even present in the article. Often it is hidden somewhere in the text. --Kri (talk) 12:17, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

You can read more about this and the measures that will taken to improve physics articles here. --Kri (talk) 21:34, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

Now archived so we can close this thread. --Kri (talk) 19:21, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

Automate archiving?

Does anyone object to me setting up automatic archiving for this page using MiszaBot? Unless otherwise agreed, I would set it to archive threads that have been inactive for 30 days and keep ten threads.--Oneiros (talk) 14:26, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

 Done--Oneiros (talk) 20:50, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Detail

Hi. In the section "Relation to mathematics and the other sciences", there is the sentence: "Physics is often said to be the "fundamental science" (chemistry is sometimes included), because each of the other disciplines (biology, chemistry, geology, material science, engineering, medicine etc.) deals with particular types of material systems that obey the laws of physics.[8]". It seems to me that not all disciplines deal with particular types of material systems... For example, philosophy and ethics are disciplines that do not deal with particular types of material systems. I would hence like to change the vague term "discipline" into a more specific term like "scientific discipline". Thanks. Nicholas Léonard 00:19, 28 March 2010 (UTC)