User:Jmk5mc/sandbox

Article Evaluation

Astrolabe

• Is everything in the article relevant to the article topic? Is there anything that distracted you?

 * As I was reading, there was a lot of useful information, but I felt that the article was lacking about some of the different histories of the astrolabe. I felt that the construction of the astrolabe should come earlier in the article in order to grasp a better understanding of the device itself to the readers. 

• Is the article neutral? Are there any claims, or frames, that appear heavily biased toward a particular position?

 * The majority of the information about the history came from the Medieval Era, and there was not much information from the Ancient Era - in which the time the astrolabe was discovered. 

• Are there viewpoints that are overrepresented, or underrepresented?

 * The section about the "Astrolabes and clocks" is interesting, but would helpful if there was more information about this topic and how they were, or the thought process, of how astrolabes helped influenced astronomical clocks today.

• Check a few citations. Do the links work? Does the source support the claims in the article?

 * The links worked and they help fill in the gaps or words that the article is using to explain an astrolabe. 

• Is each fact referenced with an appropriate, reliable reference? Where does the information come from? Are these neutral sources? If biased, is that bias noted?

 * The majority of the sources seemed to be backed up the by sources from the Cambridge University Press. Other sources are used, but the Cambridge University Press usually follows to back up this information found. 

• Is any information out of date? Is anything missing that could be added?

 * There was one sources from 1981 and the sources was a journal, but the sources checked out to be okay. 
 * It would be nice to see more information about the history in the Ancient Area.

• Check out the Talk page of the article. What kinds of conversations, if any, are going on behind the scenes about how to represent this topic?

 * There were topics about missing information such as Arzachel and some missing links about the invention of the metal astrolabe. 

• How is the article rated? Is it a part of any WikiProjects?

 * Astrology and Astronomy are rated low-importance and Computing and History of Science are rated high-importance.

• How does the way Wikipedia discusses this topic differ from the way we've talked about it in class?

 * Yes, some similar, but I felt there were more differences. Jmk5mc (talk) 16:53, 16 February 2018 (UTC)

Article Draft - Henri Becquerel

We are using both sandboxes for now to get started. Cole's Sandbox - User:Cole Phinney/sandbox.

Why did you choose it?

• We chose this article because we both wanted write and research more about a person we talked about or read about in this class. We are both interested in learning more about radioactivity so Henri Becquerel was the right choice for our article.

What's missing?

• This article is missing information about Henri Becquerel is:
  • information about his life
  • how de discovered radioactivity (the process)

What do you want to add?

• some information about his early life
• his career (What happened between 1892-1894?)
• organizing career from experiments (I want to make a separate experiment section)
• life after his career
• more in depth about his awards

Notes About Henri Becquerel

• ‘‘for his discovery of spontaneous radioactivity’’
• 1895 - succeeded his father as Chairman of Physics 1 at the school
• 1900 - Bernard Award, Helmholtz Award (look more into these)
• 1906 - vice chairman of the Acade ́mie des Sciences
  • 1908 - chairman
• Antoine Ce ́sar Becquerel (grandfather)
• Alexandre-Edmond Becquerel (father)
• civil engineer? (for 3 years)
• early work with plane polarization of light
• process of the discovery of radioactivity (the days of experiments leading up to the idea)
• 1896 - "Becquerel began looking for a connection between the phosphorescence he had already been investigating and the newly discovered x-rays. Becquerel thought that the phosphorescent uranium salts he had been studying might absorb sunlight and reemit it as x-rays."

Article Drafting: Henri Becquerel

Career

In 1892, he became the third in his family to occupy the physics chair at the Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle. In 1894, he became chief engineer in the Department of Bridges and Highways.

Becquerel's earliest works centered on the subject of his doctoral thesis: the plane polarization of light, with the phenomenon of phosphorescence and absorption of light by crystals.

Becquerel's discovery of spontaneous radioactivity is a famous example of serendipity, of how chance favors the prepared mind. Becquerel had long been interested in phosphorescence, the emission of light of one color following a body's exposure to light of another color. In early 1896, there was a wave of excitement following Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen's discovery of X-rays on the 5th of January. During the experiment, Röntgen "found that the Crookes tubes Jmk5mc (talk) 16:42, 9 March 2018 (UTC) he had been using to study cathode rays emitted a new kind of invisible ray that was capable of penetrating through black paper." Learning of Röntgen's discovery from earlier that year during a meeting of the French Academy of Sciences caused Becquerel to be interested, and soon "began looking for a connection between the phosphorescence he had already been investigating and the newly discovered x-rays" of Röntgen, and thought that phosphorescent materials, such as some uranium salts, might emit penetrating X-ray-like radiation when illuminated by bright sunlight. By May 1896, after other experiments involving non-phosphorescent uranium salts, he arrived at the correct explanation, namely that the penetrating radiation came from the uranium itself, without any need for excitation by an external energy source. There followed a period of intense research into radioactivity, including the determination that the element thorium is also radioactive and the discovery of additional radioactive elements polonium and radium by Marie Skłodowska-Curie and her husband Pierre Curie.

In 1903, Becquerel shared the Nobel Prize in Physics with Pierre and Marie Skłodowska-Curie "in recognition of the extraordinary services he has rendered by his discovery of spontaneous radioactivity".

As often happens in science, radioactivity came close to being discovered nearly four decades earlier in 1857, when Abel Niepce de Saint-Victor, who was investigating photography under Michel Eugène Chevreul, observed that uranium salts emitted radiation that could darken photographic emulsions. By 1861, Niepce de Saint-Victor realized that uranium salts produce "a radiation that is invisible to our eyes". Niepce de Saint-Victor knew Edmond Becquerel, Henri Becquerel's father. In 1868, Edmond Becquerel published a book, La lumière: ses causes et ses effets (Light: Its causes and its effects). On page 50 of volume 2, Edmond noted that Niepce de Saint-Victor had observed that some objects that had been exposed to sunlight could expose photographic plates even in the dark. Niepce further noted that on the one hand, the effect was diminished if an obstruction were placed between a photographic plate and the object that had been exposed to the sun, but " … d'un autre côté, l'augmentation d'effet quand la surface insolée est couverte de substances facilement altérables à la lumière, comme le nitrate d'urane … " ( … on the other hand, the increase in the effect when the surface exposed to the sun is covered with substances that are easily altered by light, such as uranium nitrate … ).

Experiments

Describing them to the French Academy of Sciences on 27 February 1896, he said:

One wraps a Lumière photographic plate with a bromide emulsion in two sheets of very thick black paper, such that the plate does not become clouded upon being exposed to the sun for a day. One places on the sheet of paper, on the outside, a slab of the phosphorescent substance, and one exposes the whole to the sun for several hours. When one then develops the photographic plate, one recognizes that the silhouette of the phosphorescent substance appears in black on the negative. If one places between the phosphorescent substance and the paper a piece of money or a metal screen pierced with a cut-out design, one sees the image of these objects appear on the negative ... One must conclude from these experiments that the phosphorescent substance in question emits rays which pass through the opaque paper and reduce silver salts.

But further experiments led him to doubt and then abandon this hypothesis. On 2 March 1896 he reported:

I will insist particularly upon the following fact, which seems to me quite important and beyond the phenomena which one could expect to observe: The same crystalline crusts [of potassium uranyl sulfate], arranged the same way with respect to the photographic plates, in the same conditions and through the same screens, but sheltered from the excitation of incident rays and kept in darkness, still produce the same photographic images. Here is how I was led to make this observation: among the preceding experiments, some had been prepared on Wednesday the 26th and Thursday the 27th of February, and since the sun was out only intermittently on these days, I kept the apparatuses prepared and returned the cases to the darkness of a bureau drawer, leaving in place the crusts of the uranium salt. Since the sun did not come out in the following days, I developed the photographic plates on the 1st of March, expecting to find the images very weak. Instead the silhouettes appeared with great intensity ... One hypothesis which presents itself to the mind naturally enough would be to suppose that these rays, whose effects have a great similarity to the effects produced by the rays studied by M. Lenard and M. Röntgen, are invisible rays emitted by phosphorescence and persisting infinitely longer than the duration of the luminous rays emitted by these bodies. However, the present experiments, without being contrary to this hypothesis, do not warrant this conclusion. I hope that the experiments which I am pursuing at the moment will be able to bring some clarification to this new class of phenomena.

Peer Review by Cdshel14 (talk) 19:44, 19 March 2018 (UTC)

The first thing that I noticed about your paragraph is that there were links to the different subjects you were talking about in Becquerel's Career paragraph. The paragraph follows chronologically which makes it easier to follow, but I kind of got lost when Rontgen was referred to in the middle of the paragraph, and then it went back to Becquerel. It was nothing major, I just had to reread it a few times to understand what it was saying. Overall, the paragraph makes sense and presents the information. There is nothing I can think of for you to add. The one thing from your article that I really like and I want to try to implement in mine is the linking to other pages on Wikipedia to ensure that the reader knows what is going on. Cdshel14 (talk) 19:44, 19 March 2018 (UTC)

Response to Peer Review by Jmk5mc (talk) 17:19, 21 March 2018 (UTC)

Thank you for noticing my chronological ordering of my paragraphs. That was my first priority when editing the article because I noticed the flow was a bit off when I first began reading the Henri Becquerel article. I also tried splitting up Becquerel's career and experiments to make the article flow better because two of his larger experiments went into detail breaking the flow of the article in my opinion. I am unsure if I should keep the experiments as a subheading under "Career" or create a new section for called "Experiments."

Röntgen is mentioned in the article about Henri Becquerel, so I will make the section about Röntgen more clear on why he was mentioned in that certain part. I appreciate you noticing the certain words I linked to make my point more clear for my readers about Becquerel, and I am glad I gave you an idea for your work. Jmk5mc (talk) 17:49, 21 March 2018 (UTC)