Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Physics

WikiProject Physics
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Burn and clean

Can somebody check this article Jose Luis Mendoza-Cortes is a clear mess for a WP:BLP. I would just remove everything if I were to edit it. Should it go to AfD? ReyHahn (talk) 09:44, 13 October 2025 (UTC)

• Moved on to AFD. See here: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Jose Luis Mendoza-Cortes.--ReyHahn (talk) 10:38, 13 October 2025 (UTC)

"Nucleon decay" listed at Redirects for discussion

The redirect Nucleon decay has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2025 October 15 § Nucleon decay until a consensus is reached. --MYCETEAE 🍄‍🟫—talk 16:42, 15 October 2025 (UTC)

 Note: The discussion was relisted today. It would benefit from more input from physics editors. --MYCETEAE 🍄‍🟫—talk 16:42, 15 October 2025 (UTC)

Delete Black hole electron

Please weigh in on Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Black hole electron. Johnjbarton (talk) 15:43, 16 October 2025 (UTC)

"Total energy" listed at Redirects for discussion

The redirect Total energy has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2025 October 20 § Total energy until a consensus is reached. —Myceteae‍🍄‍🟫‍(talk) 20:58, 20 October 2025 (UTC)

Discovery of the neutron

The Discovery of the neutron looks pretty good but once I started to read carefully I found more and more problems. However editor @Bdushaw disagrees with some of my changes. It would be helpful if other editors would take a look. The issues are primarily historical so I asked on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject History of Science but I'm unsure how many follow that page. Johnjbarton (talk) 16:55, 28 October 2025 (UTC)

Physics history category idea

Hi!

So I have an idea for a new type of physics-type category which I just wanted to get some thoughts on. Specifically a "XXXX in physics" cateogry which would list the set of pages assocaited with XXXX year.

The other sciences that seem to do something like this extensively seems to be in biology for when specific taxa were discovered/first described, and in archeology for when specific finds were made.

The idea would be to try to associate a single date with a page when possible. For example Dirac equation 1928, Schrodinger equation 1926, Wilson loop 1974, etc. Sometimes multiple dates may be required such as Higgs boson 1964 and 2012, etc.

Upsides:

• Nice overview of physics history by consulting Category pages, letting people see what happened when and also what physics was up to in a certain year.
• History of physics on Wikipedia is at times neglected, so this could help give it a bit more focus for writers to actually also mention who did what and when. After all, physics is a discipline done by people in time, just like anything else.

Some downsides:

• Would take effort to go through pages.
• Biggest downside I see is the possible ambiguity of pages. Many pages wouldnt admit a date at all. Like for example what would electric current?? But these could just not be included. Many other pages do seem to have reasonably well-defined dates, corresponding either to the discovery date, experiment date, or first time something was theorized date.
• Another downside could be that we would at times possibly be trying to impose a date on a historical development where no clear date exists, thus misconstruing the actual history.

Do the upsides worth it? What are your thoughts on this? Why is it unfeasable/not currently in existance? OpenScience709 (talk) 13:39, 1 November 2025 (UTC)

The biggest reason why it's not currently in existence is probably that nobody has bothered. That doesn't mean it's a bad idea, just that no one has invested the energy to start it, yet. I am a bit wary, though. In addition to the downsides you mention, Wikipedia's year-in-science articles tend to be accumulations of cruft. Every news story gets a bullet point, dubious "news" items that are really just press releases get treated like good sources, etc. Stepwise Continuous Dysfunction (talk) 16:18, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

Good point although concerning the issues with Wikipedia's "year-in-science" this would be in principle avoid it since it would be tying the article itself to the date. So assuming the articles are notable, then their inclusion in the category would be notable. If they are not, well they shouldnt be articles in the first place. This is why one would want to strongly limit the number of dates associated to an article, ideally to just one. So it wouldn't tie all the dates that may come up in the article to those cateogires, just the overarching date (if there is one. If not, no date and so no inclusion in a category).

From my experiance a lot of articles tend to have a single date assocaited to them, so such things would be reasonably unambiguous. Although most of my experiance is in theoretical physics where its usually the date of the paper that proposed the concept.

Actually one half decent criterion I could see is that a date is included if the event that happened on that date is notable enough to in principle warrent its own Wikipedia page (and the page in question has a substantial discussion of those events/they form a key element of it). This is more relevant for multi-date inclusions. So for example, Higgs boson I suggested 1964 and 2012. In fact both events effectively have their own articles, 1964 PRL symmetry breaking papers, Search for the Higgs boson (I would argue 2012 is the key date for this one), respectively.

In summary, only Wikipedia-level notable things would get dates. OpenScience709 (talk) 17:21, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

In my opinion improving the history directly would be better. This sounds like an effort which would cause many minor and potentially contentious changes ("I would argue 2012 is the key date..."). The payoff on occurs for users of categories (do they exist?) and only near the end of such a project. It essentially uses an unreliable source, Wikipedia, as references for inclusion in categories. Many topics in physics are not tied to a date. Johnjbarton (talk) 17:37, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

I suppose the category idea is more for "discoveries made it XXXX year"/"concepts proposed in XXXX year", since that could reduce the number of ambiguities and would only apply to a subset of pages (although still a vast number of them). In that case the reference isn't the unrealiable source of Wikipedia, but rather ourside sources. As for whether cateogry users exist, I can't say. I do use them sometimes to get a nice overview of a field, but thats obviously just me.

Usually (but not always) most Wikipedia pages tied to concepts have some "initial" citation. This is super useful for the reader ofc on the page itself since it tells them when/who came up with the idea/made the discovery. This is usually the date that appears/should appear in the lead of an article. That is essentially the date that I'm proposing a category for.

Acutally just realized on the note of ambiguity, putting this initial citation in the lead would be just as contentious as putting the page in a category, so the discussion on that is somewhat unavoidable.

As stated before, topics not tied to a date would not get a category inclusion (just how they wouldnt have a key date in the lead).

I do agree that the focus should be on improving the history at this point in time. Maybe the current idea should be to postpone this discussion for the future, and I'll focus on making sure that the "initial citation" reference is provided in all appropriate pages in a certain cateogry like the QFT category, so we can get an idea for how many pages have a well-defined date. (Of course QFT is not necessarily representative of all of physics categories, but its what I like focusing on, so it'll have to be that). Then we can discuss whether creating the category is viable. Although any further comments to what I mentioned in this response are appreciated ofc. OpenScience709 (talk) 15:55, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

I'd suggest developing Timeline of physics, improving one of its sublists, or creating a new sublist of your preferred physics branch. It doesn't force the events to be specific to years, the date can be less granular, as in decades or centuries. fgnievinski (talk) 19:27, 2 November 2025 (UTC)

Mass changes in categories

I noticed that @Fgnievinski has done today a large number of changes in categories of physics related articles, see this list of changes. I will question this as I do not see indications that this is a concensus move, although I might have missed it. For instance Electric flux should be under "Electromagnetism" (as stated in the 1st sentence and the template), not under "Electrical quantities". I think a few comments by others are needed before, perhaps, rolling back these changes. Ldm1954 (talk) 14:35, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

N.B., I have reverted a few while waiting for a response from @Fgnievinski Ldm1954 (talk) 15:12, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

I think there is a fuzziness of interpretation of the "meaning" of each category at play here. It makes little sense to separate electromagnetic quantities into "electric" and "magnetic" quantities. I would think that the category "Electrical quantities" should be reserved for quantities that are typically defined by the field of electrical engineering. Note that there is a difference between "electric" and "electrical" as adjectives. Quantities relating to physics (of fields, particles, etc.) would not belong here. While many of the quantities should be in a more specific category than category:Physical quantities, I disagree with many of those moved from category:Electromagnetic quantities to category:Electrical quantities. —Quondum 15:17, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

My motivation was the non-trivial intersection between Category:Electricity and Category:Electromagnetic quantities (or between Category:Magnetism and Category:Electromagnetic quantities). Maybe "Category:Electricity quantities" (and "Category:Magnetism quantities") would avoid the perceived split between the disciplines of EE and Physics. But I'm okay merging category:Electrical quantities into category:Electromagnetic quantities (both of which I've created). I only insist category:Electrical quantities is not merged into category:Physical quantities (which encompasses quantities in all natural sciences). The goal is to diffuse category:Physical quantities into subcats by subject. Roughly along the lines of the ISQ (as per ISO 80000 parts). fgnievinski (talk) 15:41, 4 November 2025 (UTC)

Precession

This is copied from Talk:Gyroscope

I have an idea for an animation that actually shows how precessional torques arise from linear momentum. Of course, since it is my idea I think it is better than any other animation. But I do not have the tools needed to make the animation. So, is there anyone, with the tools who would like to collaborate on making a better (or at least different) animation?

The image depicts a story board for this animation.

Story board for a gyro animation.

Constant314 (talk) 04:35, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

In figure 1 an X shaped lug wrench is depicted that is hollow and made from a very light weight and stiff material. It is so light that it has no appreciable angular or linear inertia.

In figure 2, hollow spheres of the same light weight material are wrapped around two ends of the lug wrench. The entire apparatus has no appreciable angular or linear inertia. But, at the center of each sphere there is a very small very dense mass. These masses are so compact that they have no appreciable moment of inertia but it does have appreciable linear inertia. We'll call them point masses.

In figure 3 the apparatus has been set into rotary motion about the Z axis. The apparatus has a large angular momentum about the z axis. At the particular instant depicted, the apparatus has almost no moment of inertia about the X axis.

In figure 4, just as the apparatus lines up with the X axis it will be rotated about the X axis.

In figure 5, this rotation has been completed. Since the moment of inertia about the X axis is almost zero, its takes almost no torque and no time to make this rotation. Consider what happens to the point masses inside the sphere. They have negligible moment of inertia so they don't get appreciable angular momentum. But, their linear momentum is still there unchanged. The point masses attempt to continue rotating as they were.

In figure 6, the point masses continue to follow the same circle. But the vertical axis of the lug wrench is no longer aligned with the Z axis. The top and bottom of the lug wrench move in circles since they are part of a rigid apparatus. Constant314 (talk) 18:10, 7 November 2025 (UTC)

I'm going to argue that this should not be in WP, for multiple reasons. It tries to be pedagogical, and though pedagogy abounds in WP, it should not: Wikipedia is to summarize accepted knowledge, not to teach subject matter, and it just confusing and fails even for this. It is also incorrect in too many ways to go into. —Quondum 01:09, 9 November 2025 (UTC)

Discussion on retiring introductory articles

There is an RfC at Wikipedia Talk:Make technical articles understandable#RfC: Amending the guideline text, which includes the proposal of possibly retiring introductory articles. You're invited to join the discussion. fgnievinski (talk) 03:11, 9 November 2025 (UTC)