Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Elements/Archive 21

This is an archive of past discussions about Wikipedia:WikiProject Elements. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

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Critique of Template

Any critique of the current template is welcome.

Color scheme

**Half-lives** (example: Gd)
¹⁴⁵Gd	< 1 day
¹⁴⁹Gd	1–10 days
¹⁴⁶Gd	10–100 days
¹⁵³Gd	100 days–10 a
¹⁴⁸Gd	10–10,000 a
¹⁵⁰Gd	10 ka–700 Ma
¹⁵²Gd	> 700 Ma
¹⁵⁸Gd	Stable

So you're looking for a new color scheme, oo64eva. Can you explain what you don't like about the color scheme used in the isotope table? What criteria should the color scheme meet?

Personally, I like the idea of using hot colors for highly radioactive isotopes rainbowing into cool colors for low activity, maybe with black for stable isotopes.
—Herbee 16:30, 2005 Apr 5 (UTC)

It's not that I don't like that system. I was just thinking we could use something simpler such as:

Stable isotopes

Unstable isotopes

Metastable isotopes

This way it's not as ambiguous as to what is stable and what is radioactive. If people wish to see the degrees of stability, they can simply click on full table below the image in the infobox to get to this isotope table. oo64eva (AJ) 19:38, Apr 5, 2005 (UTC)

I agree now that I've looked closer at the sample pages. A suggestion: the background color for metastable isotopes looks too saturated compared to the other colors. Something softer like this might be more appropriate.

—Herbee 21:29, 2005 Apr 5 (UTC)

I don't think it's possible to resolve the ambiguity between stable and unstable states. Virtually all isotopes are unstable in the infinitely-long-time limit. It's merely a matter of degree. -- Xerxes 20:25, 2005 Apr 5 (UTC)

That is hardly a practical problem. We'll just call any nuclide with a half-life of more than, say, 10³⁰ years stable—with a footnote somewhere to qualify stability.

—Herbee 21:22, 2005 Apr 5 (UTC)

I would suggest the limit be defined at or about the half-life of a proton (10³⁵?), anything above that being stable enough to outlive the protons they are made of. This definition would be fixed but the numbers fluid, as we learn more about the decay of elements we will surely know more about the decay of subatomic particles. So, any element that exceeds the proton in estimated decay (almost all the stable ones, and any unknowns) would get a 'stable' color.

I also think the stable color should be signifigantly different from the unstables. Also, I think the general coloring of time is somewhat ambiguous. I suggest the following: Each source should be a color, and the half-life should be a shade of that color. Example: Primordials (U) could be red, artificals (TC) could be green, decay products (radon) could be blue, byproducts of other radiation (carbon-14) could be cyan, extrasolar (helium-3 from the moon?) could be yellow, and gamma-induced isomers could be magenta. The half life would then be a shade of that color from almost white to almost solid (solid being almost-stable, like bismuth-209, which would appear dark red?). What would work good in this method, is to have unstable isotopes in black text on whatever background (according to source), and stable ones be white text on their background in the solid color of their source. Since the stable ones would be the heaviest shade of the color, the white should always appear visible. The shade could also be made about half black to further accent them and yet make their source known. There would be a problem with multiple-source elements of course. Thoughts? (I'll post more non-color ideas below) Splarka 01:05, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I made a sample table of what I think would work for color coding. It might be too cluttered and noisy though. Also, most of the table will look light green, maybe a swap with green and yellow to lighten the table, or such. Perhaps grey text for the very unstable elements that decay within nanoseconds. Thoughts?

Half lives (measured in seconds)
half-life:	<10^-6	<10^-3	<10⁰	<10³	<10⁶	<10¹²	<10¹⁸	<10²⁴	<10³⁶	<10⁴⁴	stable?
primordial											¹²C
artificial			⁹C					⁹⁸Tc
decay product											⁴He
ionized(?) byproduct							¹⁴C
extraterrestrial											³He
isomer								^180mTa

" I would suggest the limit be defined at or about the half-life of a proton (10³⁵?), anything…"

I understand that all isotopes truly aren’t stable, but for the purposes of scientific study, I don’t see the usefulness of breaking down half-lives between 1×10⁵ to 1×10³⁵ years into sub categories. I also think, considering the entire universe is theoretically 14×10⁹ years old, defining the stability of isotopes at this half life would be more scientifically feasible. That is, any isotopes whose half life is longer than the universe's current age, should be considered stable. Also, finding half-life data for isotopes already marked stable in some data sets could be troublesome do any of you know data where none of the isotopes are marked stable?

I somewhat agree, it just seems a shame to list tungsten and bismuth as stable when they have measured half-lives, like the data is being omitted. If we had measurements of the half-lives of all elements, then a more informed decision could be made (not going to happen soon). Perhaps removing the definition 'stable' is needed.

How about this: We all come to a consensus (easier said than done?) on what we should make a reasonable limit for stability. Then we do something similar to what Herbee suggested and put a small superscript above the word stable which links to something like "Although this isotope is considered stable under the following standard... the true half life is ...." oo64eva (AJ) 03:43, Apr 10, 2005 (UTC)

Sounds good. "Half life is over 10^something although not technically stable" disclaimer over each chart, maybe.

"I also think the stable color should be significantly different from the unstables…"

I agree, if we don’t go with my proposed red and blue color scheme, the stable isotopes should have a color that differs considerably from the unstable ones. I like the idea of an intensity scale with stable isotopes having a neutral bland color as to signify their lack of activity.oo64eva (AJ) 02:54, Apr 10, 2005 (UTC

Perhaps an inverse of my above suggestion. Another option would be to give them black squares with colored text indicating the origin (or whatever else the color is used to indicate) with the ultra unstable being the highest saturation.

I like what you did here in the table. My only criques are the following. You seem to like the idea of breaking the isotopes up by origin. My question to you is how well would they divide up into those categories? In other words, are you going to have 44 isotopes in one category, 12 in another, 138 in another, and 2,345 in another? If thats the case, is this the best way to organize the isotopes on the chart? Also, how would the nuclide chart look with 66 different colors? Would it look like a jumbled mess or would it yield an interesting and helpful color phenomena? The only way to know for sure is to so a chunk of the chart and see what arises.oo64eva (AJ) 03:43, Apr 10, 2005 (UTC)

Yah, it was just hard to stop splitting sources, I had to stop above when I ran out of primary and secondary colors. Maybe we are looking at this wrong. All the isotope tables I have seen differentiate between artificial and natural isotopes, but maybe we should ignore sources, and just have the main table indicate the half life. After all, it doesn't really matter where they came from, but where they are going, when one is looking at the graph. Creating a chunk of the chart would be hard, as one would have to intensely research each isotope for the chunk. Perhaps the first thing to do is to get most updated and accurate raw data for each isotope and then consider the charts?

General comments

I really like what you've done with the hydrogen and helium isotopes, but I've got to wonder how many people would really look up something as obscure as an arbitrary isotope. Perhaps it would be a better idea to focus our efforts on creating an easy-to-use table of nucleides. I think it would be hard to match what's already been done at the Brookhaven nucleides table, but perhaps that's a place to start.

As for color scheme, I'd also refer to the NuDat table, which has a nice gradient from unstable orange through green and blue to black stable. Also, I don't see why we should restrict ourselves to a small number of colors. Why not choose colors out of some continuum by mapping log half-life into hue in an HSB scheme (or something like that)? -- Xerxes 20:25, 2005 Apr 5 (UTC)

You're right Xerxes, making 3100 entries on all the known isotopes seems time consuming and silly, akin to making an encyclopedia entry on every known star. Here's what I think we should do. Definatley make entries on all of the notable isotopes. These are isotopes used in telling time, medical use, nuclear counting experimentation, famous discoveries, etc... there is no question about including those. It's the ones with which little or no information exists besides raw nuclear data that I think you're referring to. There one are two ways I think we should go about that. One is to create each entry, with a single line introduction such as "element-123 is an exotic radioactive isotope of element." This way we have a table of nuclear data on it and anyone can now expand on this stub. Another more compact idea is to create an entry called "exotic element isotopes" like what is done here, but we would include infobox tables on each isotope. If someone finds a wealth of new information on that isotope, we simply create a new entry on it, and link to it on the exotic isotope of element whatever page.

You and Herbee have similar ideas on the color scheme. We might have to make some type of wikipedia standard for this. If we do go with a multiple color scheme for radioactive isotopes, I was wondering how we would implement that into the tables. One method is creating a single template for radioactive isotopes, and having a variable for cell and text color that is entered in each entry. That is how I have it set now. Another option is to make tables on each color code, so possibly 5-10 tables. This way if someone completely changes a color code in the future, they only have to change the template. Either method has its pros and cons. What do you think? oo64eva (AJ) 16:14, Apr 6, 2005 (UTC)

That'll teach me to answer as I go, see above for my color opinions. However, I had another thought. You could have different tables for different methods of comparison. It would be useful to have a table just comparing sources of the isotopes on earth, or abundance in the universe, or decay methods (a chart with each cell having a stop sign or arrow pointing up, down, sideways, diagonally, indicating the decay, might show some interesting patterns). This would be a lot of work, unless the data could be referenced dynamically.

I also think, even if the data is not used, it should be available here. I would love to see something like List of isotopes with the half lives, decay methods, decay products, decay energies, source (primordial, artifical, decay byproduct, fusion byproduct, extraterrestrial, ionized, etc) for each isotope, all on one page or group of pages. This would be a major undertaking, but could be used as a centralized reference for all isotope information in wikipedia, being the first page edited when new information was presented (and the information propagating outward from there). This would eliminate conflicting isotope information, that seems somewhat common here. A date and source of each citing could be made in a linked sources page, if needed, so outdated information would not supplant new.

One of the easiest to use databases (for the amateur isotope monkey like me) of isotopes, decay methods, decay chains, and decay products is [here], but the information is apparently several years out of date. Thoughts? Splarka 01:17, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)

"...could have different tables for different methods of comparison. It would be useful to have a table just comparing sources..."

All of your ideas sound great. Maybe you can put some sample tables on the main project page for critique. Also, try thinking of different kinds of additional data we can include in the proposed tables. For example, should we keep excess energy? Should we include other types of data? I like your ideas with breaking up origins of isotopes into categories that might be a good thing to include in the tables.

Do you mean, put some sample tables, for the main table Isotope table (complete), the png thumbnail, or the individual isotope data page? And, sample charts like above or samples of the data in table form? (Sorry, too many overlapping terms confuse me!) Splarka 03:37, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)

"I would love to see something like List of isotopes with the half lives, decay methods..."

So you’re saying there should be articles like List of artificial isotopes, List of isotopes with long half lives, List of fusion byproducts? That would definitely be of help to people looking for specifics and not having to sift through 3100 isotopes. That’s something I would also like to see happen. Organization is probably the most important thing when you’ve got this much information to deal with.

Well, those should definitely exist too. But I meant, one page with the peritnent information, at the least the half lives, atomic mass, and decay modes of all 3100 isotopes, as a text-only chart (the decay mode could possibly be a small graphic to save space). Basically a raw-data mode of Isotope table (complete). It would more serve as a tool for all other isotope projects. One could re-generate the isotope tables whenever new data became available, for example. It could also be used to generate and re-generate those other lists. It wouldn't have to be hosted on the wikipedia, but if it was it would give anyone a chance to refine the data as needed, giving it more credence than old outdated lists from the US government or single researchers. Maybe? Splarka 03:37, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Also, another great database is the 16th table of nuclides published by Lockheed Martin distribution. I’m not sure about the copyrights they enforce so I emailed them about five days ago for permission to use their data under Wiki’s free use policies. We’ll see what they say.oo64eva (AJ) 02:54, Apr 10, 2005 (UTC)

Re: "Maybe you can put some sample tables on the main project page for critique." I spent some time this week thinking about colors for isotope tables. You can see my experiments here: User:Splarka/Sandbox:isotopes (as of this posting, I haven't yet made a sample of what the decay-based table would look like, might do that later tonight). Splarka 03:08, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I can't see how we will ever be able to create entries for so many thousands of isotopes with so few people here. Can't this project use a bot to extract information from isotope tables and create the pages automatically?--Deglr6328 07:35, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Marblegrams

The nuclide pictures, showing nucleons as little red an blue 'marbles', look dubious to me. They do catch the eye, but will convey little physically relevant information. What would the picture for U-238 look like?

If these 'marblegrams' stay, I would suggest a change of colors. Red is universally accepted to indicate positive voltage, so it would improve intuitabilty to color the protons red and the neutrons some neutral, dull color like gray.
—Herbee 21:14, 2005 Apr 5 (UTC)

I made the colors red and blue so that it stands out, but you're right red is indicative of positive voltage in circuits and such. My rationale for using marble diagrams was to illustrate the concept of an isotope by showing what the nucleus might look like. I can see why this is pointless since those looking up more obscure isotopes would obviously know what the nucleus should look like and therefore not benefit from this effort. My intention is not to insult anyone’s intelligence. That said, do you think something else should fill that space, or should it be blank? oo64eva (AJ) 16:14, Apr 6, 2005 (UTC)

	¹H
¹n	²H	³He
	³H	⁴He

We could have a clickable map of neighbouring isotopes instead of the marblegrams. This would give functionality similar to what the Periodic Table does for elements, although the look and feel is a bit different.
—Herbee 13:42, 2005 May 9 (UTC)

that is a great idea, i'll have to look into if Wikipedia handles inline image map support for PNG's. — oo64eva (Alex) ^{(U | T | C)} @ 18:24, May 9, 2005 (UTC)

The value of marblegrams is in doubt, but no obvious replacement has presented itself in over three weeks. My suggestion is: when in doubt, keep it simple. Let's just show the symbol for a nuclide (e.g., ²³⁸₉₂U—sorry for being <math> lazy). If we hit on a great idea later on, at least we haven't been wasting lots of time. Let's just not allow the issue to halt the whole project.
—Herbee 21:24, 2005 Jun 2 (UTC)

Alright, there is no way to make a clickable nav image in wikipedia unless we use easy timeline, which i'm doing now. I have a plan. — oo64eva (Alex) ^{(U | T | C)} @ 21:59, Jun 2, 2005 (UTC)

How many articles?

Over on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Elements we're discussing a careful editing of the isotope boxes for the individual elements. In the process, we're providing links to the (mostly non-existent) isotope pages. So a natural question came up: how will the isotope pages ultimately be laid out? I see two reasonable choices:

A page per isotope.
A page per element, Isotopes of carbon.

Either one works. A page per element is more chemistry-oriented and probably a lot less work. A page per isotope is more uniform and possibly more convenient for the user.

A mix might work, too; starting with a page per element and then bursting the element pages with lots of interesting isotopes into individual isotope pages.

Keep in mind that barring major effort, most of the isotope pages will contain essentially tabular data, more or less what you'd find in the CRC handbook.

Kinds of navigation that would be useful:

Walking decay chains, up and down (okay, technetium-99m comes from molybdenum-99, which comes from ...) (tc-99m decays to tc-99 which decays to ruthenium which ...) This will probably more-or-less allow one to walk along lines of constant atomic mass (via beta decay)
Going from one isotope to another of the same element
Going from an isotope to the generic page on the element (and vice versa)
Going from an isotope to a giant isotope table and back

I think isotopes of element pages would support this well; they can start as simple copies of the isotope tables now found on the elements pages and grow from there to incorporate references, brief descriptions, and so on, as needed. --Andrew 22:19, May 6, 2005 (UTC)

Well we were thinking of making a page per element, because 3100 new pages most of which would just have a table is pretty frivolous. On the isotopes of element page we would have sections for each isotope. For elements with large numbers of isotopes we may even break those down into two or three pages. For isotopes of some notability, they would certainly own their own page, linked via the element isotope page.

I think it is necessary that the data from the isotope section of each element page match the data from our project. It's kind of silly to have conflicting data in the same encyclopedia. I haven't seen a conflict yet but I think conflicting data should garner some inter-project discussion to get a consensus on which data is most accurate. — oo64eva (Alex) ^{(U | T | C)} @ 02:56, May 7, 2005 (UTC)

The reason I bring this up now is because we have a nuclear engineering student who is keen to go through and fix all the data to match one of the standard references in the subject; sie is using templates to get the tables, so we could just include, on the Isotopes of carbon page, {{C-isotopes}} and get the identical table. Of course we'd fill in explanations and discussion (C-14 dating, etc.) Ultimately I imagine we want more information than this on the multiple isotopes page; it can serve as a referenced source for the table on the chemical element page. --Andrew 03:56, May 7, 2005 (UTC)

so wait, sie is making templates for the tables? We have someone working on tables for that. It sounds like we might need to get an interproject consensus on a standarized table. I also designed a table to be placed on individual isotope pages... as you can see here Hydrogen atom and here Hydrogen-3. — oo64eva (Alex) ^{(U | T | C)} @ 04:34, May 7, 2005 (UTC)

We're talking about at least three different 'templates' so far, 1. Template:Infobox isotope for single isotopes, 2. as used by User:Sunborn/isotopes to include whole isotope data tables, and 3. User:Femto/elements_e1 etc. my row-based template conversion effort of the chemical elements infoboxes.

The isotope tables in the chemical element articles, and the data tables on separate "isotopes of element" pages, will have very different scopes, even now. So I don't see the benefit of having single versions of isotope tables in template pages to be able to insert copies of identical data.

There should be no question that the element infobox tables can only be but an overview of the notable isotope information; they should be selective about what they include. And they should assume any data as given by the isotope pages as their comprehensive reference.

Re: "start as simple copies of the isotope tables now found on the elements pages" — Would this be of use as a starting point? User:Femto/isotopes as is. It's the extracted rows of isotope data from the chemical element articles as it was when I started working with the infoboxes. It's not checked or anything, but I've done some formatting to have at least something to put into the boxes. As mentioned, it's just two table-row generating user-templates. The items are already divided into parameters. It may or may not be easier to edit from this than to create everything anew.

The page names "isotopes of element" may be restricting. The chemical element articles will link to these pages, and they would be a natural place to also contain other nuclear data for the element, not directly related to isotopes and not justifying separate pages. Should we try to find a more neutral name?

I'd also like to emphasize that repeated links and phrases in the data (such as "decay mode= beta emission") should be standardized through templates somehow, where possible, or they soon will deteriorate and become inconsistent. I've seen at least five or six different formats in the element infoboxes of writing/linking "β⁻" for example. Femto 15:37, 7 May 2005 (UTC)

Isotope errors in element pages?

The elements Wikiproject is pretty dead these days, so I thought I should talk to you guys. If you read the recent edits on the main copper page, you will find snide remarks about the fact that the table gives an average number of neutrons rather than the actual number in the commonest isotope. These remarks are particularly apposite with copper because the isotope shown (29P + 35N) turns out to have a half-life of a few hours. I mentioned this to the person who posted the image, at User_talk:Schneelocke#Image_on_copper_element_page (see discussion there), but it turns out that this problem applies to all of the element table images! I would see this as an embarrassing error, but perhaps others see it as a legitimate way to present the data. What do the "isotope people" think? It seems to me that if it is regarded as wrong then we need to fix it ASAP. I don't really have the resources to do this. Looking at the French and Spanish pages, they seem to use the same image as the English pages. However the Germans switch around 1st December away from the image we have to a new style which lists the most common isotope. What should we do? Walkerma 22:20, 11 May 2005 (UTC)

In general, when you talk about an element, you're not talking about the actual atom. Copper is an element, not an atom. I assume however, the images are depicting the copper atom. That being the case, it was up to the discretion of the element project people to decide which atom to represent. Looking back in the archived talk pages I found that there wasn't any discussion on this topic. It also surprised me that they chose to list the number of neutrons on the image without an explanation of a standard to go on. The standard used most frequently in chemistry is to define the number of neutrons of a general atom of an element as the difference between the average of all of the atomic weights of the naturally occurring isotopes and the atomic number. If they used that standard, then they would be correct as long as they stayed consistent. The other standard is to use the most frequently occurring isotope as the number of neutrons in a general copper atom. I personally, would find this to be the most helpful and meaningful standard. If I was making the images, I would use this standard. The only change I would make, is to place a little * at the top of the number of neutrons on each image, then at the bottom of the image explain that (The number of neutrons is derived from an average of the atomic weights of the naturally occurring isotopes of this element.)

To fix the images you'd need the original PNG template, which hopefully the original creator graciously kept here? The images on all of the element pages are compressed and flattened versions with all of the layer and text information removed. — oo64eva (Alex) ^{(U | T | C)} @ 23:35, May 11, 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the clarification. I agree with you- but if it's a standard convention I have to accept that. It seems odd to me, since the average is a bulk property but the number of neutrons is an atomic property- it makes it seem like the "typical" copper atom has 35 neutrons. I have to teach this material, and I think students have a hard enough time understanding the difference between mass number and atomic mass, without this to make it even harder! Walkerma 14:30, 12 May 2005 (UTC)

I believe the reason there is no discussion on the number of neutrons is because the pictures are imported from a different language's wikipedia. I think that they are from the french wiki for some reason. However, the original uploader to the commons works on the Catalian wiki. So I have no idea which wiki they came from. --metta, The Sunborn 14:57, 12 May 2005 (UTC)

The images were originally created by User:Maveric149 (Wikipedia:WikiProject Elements#Next Phase, with a few editing instructions) and were only uploaded to commons later. Femto 17:47, 12 May 2005 (UTC)

Infobox isotope

What do we do if the isotope has more than one decay method? More interestingly, what do we do if there is more than one energy? The template does not currently allow for more than one decay energy. Most isotopes actually have more than one decay (if we include gamma), so I don't know why this was not thought of. Even if we ignore gamma (which we shouldn't) is is still common for multiple decay methods Co-60 has two betas for instance. --metta, The Sunborn 16:08, 13 May 2005 (UTC)

Is this going to get resolved or am I going to have to do it?--metta, The Sunborn 20:53, 26 May 2005 (UTC)

No you don't have to, I'll fix it. I always appreciate input. — oo64eva (Alex) ^{(U | T | C)} @ 22:13, May 26, 2005 (UTC)

A good point to raise is: do we want to include decay methods that occur less than 1% of the time? I haven't been in the element boxes but that doesn't mean we shouldn't in a detailed article. --metta, The Sunborn 22:27, 26 May 2005 (UTC)

That would be kind of picky to put in an infobox but putting that information in the article goes without saying in my opinion. — oo64eva (Alex) ^{(U | T | C)} @ 22:36, May 26, 2005 (UTC)

What the heck?

You folks don't seriously want to create articles for every single isotope, do you? That would be insane and result in a great many stubs that can never be anything more than that (only a few dozen - at most - isotopes have enough known about them to have articles of their own). We should instead concentrate on expanding the ==Isotopes== sections of each and every element article and then, if and only if those sections get too long, create Isotopes of ... articles to host the detail while the main element articles have more compact summaries of the isotope information. --mav 02:24, 31 May 2005 (UTC)

Not exactly. What we plan on doing is not creating 3100 stubs, but creating articles on each element's isotopes like you suggested. Each isotope of element page will have data on each isotope on it. Isotopes that are particularly of note would get their very own page. All other isotopes would redirect to their parent Isotope of Element page. We're in need of team members so if you would like to help, that would be terrific. — oo64eva (Alex) ^{(U | T | C)} @ 04:09, May 31, 2005 (UTC)

Why on Earth is there a seperate WikiProject for isotopes seperate from the Elements project? Each isotope is a particular type of each element. It would seem much better to have all the information about each element in one project, rather than spread across two. Of course I realize the elements are taught before and seperately from the nucleides, for obvious reasons, but there is no good reason to seperate them here. Am I wrong? --D. Estenson II 14:10, July 13, 2005 (UTC)

It's a subproject of the Chemistry WikiProject as is the Elements project. You could almost look at it as a sister project with Wikiproject Chemistry being the parent. — oo64eva (Alex) ^{(U | T | C)} @ 09:07, July 15, 2005 (UTC)

Status board

Some of the other members of this project has expressed concern over the progress. Therefore, I think it is necessary for all of the contributors to post their daily progress and what they are up to on the status board. If you will not be working for a period of time be it a day or week, that's fine, just say so in the status box. I'd rather see someone say they won't be working on it than just be idle. If you are working on other areas of Wikipedia that day that is fine, just say so on the status board. — oo64eva (Alex) ^{(U | T | C)} @ 11:07, May 31, 2005 (UTC)

Have we decided on a standard layout for each element's table of isotopes (or even having one) on the "Isotopes of element" pages? Also, the PD isotope data I have access to is limited to online sources, should I choose a separate source from yours? If halflives/energies disagree should we enter a range? Do I ask too many questions? Splarka 19:41, 31 May 2005 (UTC)

There are never too many questions, and definately never too many answers. No, we haven't decided on a standard layout for each element's table of isotopes. The only two in existence are the one on your sandbox and the one made by some other user here. We definately need to standardize and vote for one. As for disagreement/agreement of sources, I use mutliple sources myself to confirm things. If the two or three sources I used disagree I try to look at what institution is more reputable and also which data is in wider use. An interesting thing is to see if our data agrees with the element people's data. — oo64eva (Alex) ^{(U | T | C)} @ 20:25, May 31, 2005 (UTC)

Oh, and for more real time interaction, I'll be on #Wikipedia most of today. If you don't have an IRC client I'd recommend mIRC. — oo64eva (Alex) ^{(U | T | C)} @ 20:28, May 31, 2005 (UTC)

tungsten

Oo64eva, can you do me a favour and look over your data on tungsten isotopes, the data on wikipedia says that all the isotopes decay via alpha with huge half-lives. My data is old and doesn't show any decays for bismith either so it could just be my data. However, it is unlikely that all 4 "stable" isotopes of tungsten decay. Not to mention, the article says that the decays haven't been observed. I personally, contend that if they are not observed, we can't say they actually take place. --metta, The Sunborn 15:18, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)

According to NuDat, W-186 is indeed stable. However, the other "stable" isotopes are listed as very-long-lifetime alpha-emitters, the energy spectra of which are unknown. Bi-209 is also listed as stable. Where are these other numbers coming from? -- Xerxes 15:51, 2005 Jun 2 (UTC)

Ah, nevermind. The Bi-209 is a special case with a ref at the bottom. Still, I'd recommend relisting "not observed" as "energy not measured" or something to that effect. Or just leave it blank. -- Xerxes 15:58, 2005 Jun 2 (UTC)

It is just that the article technetium has it listed as being a not stable element: the other such elements are promethium, tungsten and bismuth although tungsten and bismuth have very long half-lives and are sometimes classed as stable I don't contest the bismuth one, but tungsten seems to have stable isotopes. I am going to remove that line for now, in accordance with no original research. --metta, The Sunborn 16:39, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)

My paper source, the 16th edition (2002) of Nuclides and Isotopes: Chart of the Nuclides published by Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory a subsidiary of Lockheed Martin show four stable isotopes of Tungsten and one meta stable isotope. It says nothing about alpha decay or any large half lives. Thumbing through this book I found that they consider any half life larger than 100 million years to be stable as denoted by a grey box. Even though they list things as stable, if there is a half life, they list do list it. They even have Ba-132 down as having a half life of 1E21 years. Considering they measure half lives this large, I would think they would show if Tungsten had measurable half lives. I am wondering where NuDat obtained this information. I would also be very very wary about trying to extract meaningful conclusions from that data. — oo64eva (Alex) ^{(U | T | C)} @ 19:21, Jun 2, 2005 (UTC)

whose data is it anyway

>> Oo64eva (06/28/05): The authors of the "Chart of Nuclides" have informed me that it violates copyright restrictions to use their data in Wikipedia. Therefore we cannot use the "Chart of Nuclides" distributed by Knolls Atomic Power Lab. It is only to be used as a personal reference and nothing more. Thanks for your cooperation.

Please quote any relevant correspondence of yours with these gentlemen. Also, could an owner of said chart quote its exact copyright claims and statements? I believe copyright doesn't even apply here. We do not copy any accompanying descriptions, color coding, arrangement, or specific tabulation layouts that are of any creative worth. Neither would it be plausible for them to claim "sweat of brow work" or recent discovery for all these facts or an substantial part thereof, which may make it eligible to fall under specific database protection laws where applicable (and for which WP would likely be exempted anyway). I am not a lawyer.

My suggestion would be just to change any citation in our references section to something like this:

Wikipedia's data does not cite the Chart of Nuclides by Knolls Atomic Power Lab as its reference, though any facts may have been verified at one time by individual editors from their personal references to coincide with said publication.

If they play the "our data" game, we can do that too. Femto 28 June 2005 12:37 (UTC)

"Dear Mr. (Last name withheld), I have consulted the KAPL attorney regarding your request to use data contained in the Chart of the Nuclides in the open source encyclopedia, Wikipedia. As you know, there is a copywrite [sic] on the Chart by KAPL, Inc. According to our attorney, if we allow Chart information to be published in a "free access media" like Wikipedia, we would essentially be violating our own copywrite [sic]. We, therefore, cannot give you permission to use the data. Sincerely, [The Authors]"

After an inquiry I made about using their data in April, a letter (above) was sent to my office mailbox at Purdue by the authors as well as my email that I received yesterday. — oo64eva (Alex) ^{(U | T | C)} @ June 28, 2005 13:42 (UTC)

Why would you even ask them for permission? As long as we use only the facts presented we are fine. The supreme court of the US ruled that one cannot copyright data. It was a case on a phone book. It was ruled that anyone can take the data in a phone book and re-arange it because the "original" aspect, the page numbers and formatting, were not copied. The data is not sufficently original and therefore not copyrightable. Try asking wikipedia's lawyers and see what they have to say one the issue, after all, IANAL. --metta, The Sunborn 28 June 2005 13:56 (UTC)

Why are we not using NuDat, which is published on a .gov, and thus is probably public domain? -- Xerxes 2005 June 28 15:36 (UTC)

Because NuDat doesn't give us decay energy. Plus I am not convinced that they are any more government than the Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory. --metta, The Sunborn 28 June 2005 16:18 (UTC)

It's run by the US Department of Energy out of Brookhaven National Labs on a .gov web address. How much more government can you get? And it has all decays and energy levels, both of isotopes and isomers. See, for example: Decay of the U-238 isotope. -- Xerxes 2005 June 28 17:07 (UTC)

So it does have decay emission energy. It even has branching data too. I have been poking around that site for days and hadn't found any energy emission levels. And for the record, the people that are claiming copyrights have a .gov tld too. --metta, The Sunborn 28 June 2005 18:23 (UTC)

I asked permission because it's just not as simple as saying the data is fair use because it is simply data. The entire chart is copyrighted. What obviously can't be copyrighted is atomic weights and half lives but I'm not too sure about other data they present. We don't have to worry about form because our style of chart is unlike any other because of its vertical top-down design. — oo64eva (Alex) ^{(U | T | C)} @ June 28, 2005 18:20 (UTC)

A .gov web address by no means suggests that the data is PD, which as well may be sub-licensed work created by contractors, for instance. — Why are we not using the best of both (or more) worlds? No one source is as reliable as two sources combined. I'm thinking of data pages similar to electrical resistivities of the elements (data page) for example, that compare, keep comparable, and select the best data from several available sources. It's good when individual editors check for (dis)agreements between multiple sources, but the information about the decisions that led to the selection of certain values is essentially lost. By far not everybody has access to all of the possible sources, and all this data has to be viewed and collected in any case, so why not make it available? Also, comparing data from several sources would make these pages of Wikipedia a true scientific educational work in its own right, and much harder to claim they're just ripping off some book or website. Femto 28 June 2005 20:04 (UTC)

branching data

Now that we have branching data from Brookhaven National Labs do we want to include it? I have a prototype on my personal sandbox. Have a look: User:Sunborn/sandbox. The only difference is the decay is in symbol and the space used for the branching data --metta, The Sunborn 1 July 2005 16:57 (UTC)

"Isotopes of <element>" pages created.

I've created a full set (elements 1-118) of semi-stub articles. They include isotope masses from Ame2003 Atomic Mass Evaluation and isotopic compositions and standard atomic masses from Atomic Weights of the Elements: Review 2000 (IUPAC Technical Report). (Which makes Wikipedia's data more recent than some of our sources themselves, like NIST or kaeri, which mostly still cite the Isotopic compositions 1997 or the Atomic Mass Evaluation review 1995, ...by the way!)

I didn't dare to include any decay data from the Nubase2003 (same site as Ame2003) evaluation of nuclear and decay properties. This looks like it could be the one, main source for our isotope info, what do you think? It's most recent, critically evaluated scientific mainstream data, in a format easy to extract and convert.

The next necessary step, in any case and in the first place, is to decide which data should be presented on these pages, and to define the format of how it should look like (preferably by someone who knows more about it than I do). Femto 13:29, 24 August 2005 (UTC)

I have assumed BNL to have the most accurate and up to date information. Any data that contradicts the BNL should require significant proof. I have used the BNL data on all the element data boxes that i have done. I stopped about half-way through, bordom and other things cropped in. But the BNL data is the best I have seen. All other data is usually approximation of all the data BNL has.

As for what to include, I say ditch the Auger and conversion electrons unless the energy and percentage is high. Same with X-ray data. Unless of course we want to include all data. The single problem with BNL is that they don't separate meta-states which we must do. They are nucluarly different and behave differently. However, I doubt that we can ever put the entirety of the data in the article. For instance, even the important U-235 has too much data ([1]). However, on the important decays I think branching data might be nice. There might be a problem with BNL not averaging the half-life between decays. One decay might have a different half-life than the other leading to a different overall half-life. I know this is the case in Cf-252. BNL also doesn't list some decays on their detailed decay search. Double electron capture and Spontaneous fission are both only seen in the Nudat 2 "picture" ([2]).

I dunno if I actually said anything there but whatever. --metta, The Sunborn 18:19, 24 August 2005 (UTC)

I dunno if I actually understood anything. :) My interpretation is that both NuDat and Nubase are based on the Evaluated Nuclear Structure Data File (ENSDF), only at different levels of "digestion". The advantage of the more condensed evaluation is that, given we have a guideline of how the tables should look like, basically any Wikipedian with some elementary understanding of the matter can work on the data. Without having to worry about too many subtleties, because somebody else already did that for us. Like "Take the half-lives from here, make sure to watch the uncertainty notation, and put them there in the articles." Femto 20:49, 24 August 2005 (UTC)

We could also spell everything out for them, so when we are running a conversion script it adds all explanations. So we could have explanations to all the guys on the street that want to know. I was also thinking of taking it from an average person's view. This would leave most, if not all, of the numbers out of the article. So we run an set of "if" statements. If alpha energy is >1.5 MeV add this section detailing the harm of alpha rays. The settings would have to be tweaked good and checked over because some paragraphs might need manual judgement. --metta, The Sunborn 04:22, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

Templates introduced in the isotope tables

Te
¹²²Te
¹²³Te

After some testing and proofreading by Femto and myself, the templates Iso1 and Iso2 were introduced in Isotope table (complete) and Isotope table (divided) some weeks ago. Iso1 is used for one-coloured cells and Iso2 is used for two-coloured cells. The code may read, e.g., {{Iso2|123|Te|O|B}} (see examples to the right). The code is now easier to read, and both file sizes were halved (from ~95 kB to ~45 kB), thus reducing or eliminating the risk of typos created by software. Could these templates or variants of them be used in this project? Any suggestions for further improvement of the isotope tables, or other comments? --Eddi (Talk) 11:58, 2 September 2005 (UTC)

¹⁴⁸Gd

¹⁵⁰Gd

Each isotope in the isotope table now has a title displaying the half-life when hovering over the cell. Check out the examples to the right. --Eddi (Talk) 07:17, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

Colour intensity in isotope table cells

**Half-life** (example: Gd)
¹⁴⁵Gd	¹⁴⁵Gd	¹⁴⁵Gd	< 1 day
¹⁴⁶Gd	¹⁴⁶Gd	¹⁴⁶Gd	1–10 days
¹⁴⁹Gd	¹⁴⁹Gd	¹⁴⁹Gd	10–100 days
¹⁵³Gd	¹⁵³Gd	¹⁵³Gd	100 days – 10 years
¹⁴⁸Gd	¹⁴⁸Gd	¹⁴⁸Gd	10–10,000 years
¹⁵⁰Gd	¹⁵⁰Gd	¹⁵⁰Gd	10k–103M years
¹⁵²Gd	¹⁵²Gd	¹⁵²Gd	> 700M years
¹⁵⁸Gd	¹⁵⁸Gd	¹⁵⁸Gd	Stable

Having worked for a while with the isotope table, I find the contrast between the isotope data and some of the background colours not optimal, at least not in all browsers. Various colours have been discussed for various purposes in this project and the deep colours were apparently chosen for the isotope table at some point, but I gather nothing is set in stone. Are there any objections to lighter colours in the isotope tables? For some practical examples see the Danish version and the Norwegian version. --Eddi (Talk) 11:58, 2 September 2005 (UTC)

The current (deep) and proposed (light) colours are compared in the table to the right. I plan to introduce the new colours soon. --Eddi (Talk) 07:17, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

Not at all opposed to the lighter colors here. (With the little exception that the yellow and green are quite saturated and somehow don't look right). Femto 16:49, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

I'm not very good with colours, so I ripped the Danish version. Which colour wizard could be consulted? --Eddi (Talk) 04:39, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

Easy. Just modify the perceived lightness in the L*a*b* space towards gamma corrected equiluminance under CCIR Rec. 601, and while you're at it, adjust the chromaticities for maximized and equalspaced delta E in the monitor gamut … Alternatively, we could approach it scientifically and twiddle with the RGB values of those two colors until they look better. See table. (Before anybody asks, yes there is a difference. 8-) Femto 13:35, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

Well done! Yellow and green look much better. (But I had to stare for a long time to see the change in cyan.) --Eddi (Talk) 23:45, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

Lower bound of half-life color scheme

Hi all. I haven't been following the project much lately, but I have to ask: why is it good idea to set the lower bound of the table at 1 day? Well over half the table of isotopes falls off scale when you do that. The original scheme using log(T) in seconds going down to picoseconds made a lot more sense. -- Xerxes 00:29, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

The gradations date back to the old BNL site from where the data for the isotope table (complete) was taken. Ultimately, the content should be synchronized with the isotope pages, at that opportunity a custom color scheme can be implemented. Which sounds like a whole project by itself though. Femto 12:11, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

I would suggest limits that divide the isotopes in 8 approximately equal sets, although the two ends ("stable" and "unstable") may be slightly bigger than the other pieces. The limits of "stable" and "unstable" should be numerical values. Is there any cumulative list or diagram of isotopes sorted by half-lives that could be used to set the limits? --Eddi (Talk) 21:01, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

I think it's hard to improve on NuDat. You could just take their range and block it into 8 if that magic number suits. -- Xerxes 21:41, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

Isotope table as Featured list candidate?

It has been suggested that Isotope table (complete) could be nominated as a Featured list candidate. On the talk page of the isotope table I have set up a few issues that I think should be addressed if the table is going to be nominated. Any expert contributions in reviewing the article and the data would be appreciated. --Eddi (Talk) 00:12, 6 September 2005 (UTC)

Isotopes of <element> pages expanded

The "isotopes of <element>" pages (example isotopes of uranium) now all include half-lives, spins, and isomers. No decay modes and no fancy styling, but it's triple-referenced data, probably making these articles more reliable than any single external source alone. Femto 15:15, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

Excellent work!!! — oo64eva (Alex) ^{(U | T | C)} @ 15:25, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

Naturally. I mean... thanks! Femto 18:29, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

Isotopes and band names

There's currently a vote at Talk:Cobalt-60 (isotope) to de-disambiguate as the primary topic. — Similarly, there is Strontium 90 (no isotope page nor naming conflict yet). Isotope band names seem to be popular, any others to watch? Femto 14:14, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

Articles for the Wikipedia 1.0 project

Hi guys,

You seem to have done a great job on uploading isotope data, this is very much appreciated. I'm working on the Work via WikiProject part of Wikipedia 1.0, a plan to produce a paper/CD/DVD version of Wikipedia. We are using these assessment criteria, which are basically the same as those used over on the WP:Chem worklist, that you're probably familiar with. Do you think your full set of articles "Isotopes of element" is ready to be included in this? If not, what is the status of this (very useful) series? They doesn't need to be absolutely complete down to every half life, as long as the articles are basically accurate. Are you working on any new articles, lists or tables? I have already listed your beautiful Isotope table (complete) as A-Class. Please leave your comments here. Thanks, Walkerma 04:35, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

Right from the beginning, my intentions as the main perpetrator—I mean contributor—of the "isotopes of element" pages were, that they'd be able to serve as a hard and reliable Wikipedia-internal reference for their kind of data. Their status is, I'm proud to say, that they are absolutely complete down to every half life (whose data was available and seemed conclusive). I had to stop at not including decay data for lack of knowledge about these things, and personally have no immediate expansions planned for this project. Femto 13:41, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

There's now the newly-created index to isotope pages which can be used to collectively refer to the set of them with one link. Rename as appropriate, like I mentioned elsewhere I suck at making up article titles. (There's also a list of isotopes which seems never to have really gotten off the ground though.) Femto 16:39, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

That's great - I'm very impressed with your output, esp. considering the size of the group! I think I'll propose we include Isotope table (complete) and index to isotope pages, as well as the 118 "Isotopes of Xy" articles in the full-size release. Thanks a lot! Walkerma 04:52, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

Index to isotope pages

The Index to isotope pages (renamed or not) could be supplemented by letting the column titles of the Isotope table link to the isotope pages instead of the element articles. As to renaming the index, how about Isotopes of the chemical elements or something? --Eddi (Talk) 03:42, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

Good idea, but some may find the element link also useful. The atomic numbers above are still 'free' however.
That's the problem. "Of the elements" is a little redundant since isotopes are elements, also the page is not about the isotopes but merely an index. No idea if there are naming guidelines for pages with meta-content such as this. Analogous to melting points of the elements (data page), perhaps "isotopes by element (index)"? (Anyhow and by the way, I added a link in the navbox template at the bottom of each isotope page.) Femto 15:39, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

Isotope page structure

Pardon my uneducated complaint - but something appears "not right" to me about the tables on the "Isotopes of (page)"s - why is excitation energy below and across the Z, N, isotopic mass columns ? GraemeLeggett 09:36, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

Yes, the columns are supposed to interleave, because this data is mutually exclusive for nuclear isomers (indented symbols, denoted by an m). Z and N are the same and don't need to be repeated, while the mass applies exactly only to the ground state. In the row of a metastable state, this space is then instead spanned with the entry of its excitation energy. Femto 12:15, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

Having heard that explanation, I would say you need to add that to the article page. GraemeLeggett 12:47, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

Hm, I think the table format itself is quite straightforward. To those already familiar with the terminology, it should be obvious which refers to what. Beyond that, detailed encyclopedic explanations on the nature of the subject itself should be avoided, in favor of strategically placed self-explanatory links to atomic number, mass number, nuclear isomer, half-life, nuclear spin etc. Admittedly, there didn't go much work into the user-friendliness of the format. I'm afraid at present I haven't much brain to spare on extended redesigns. The header and table structure is currently like this: feel free to edit with suggestions and then modify its instances in the isotope pages. Femto 15:22, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

nuclide symbol	Z(p)	N(n)	isotopic mass (u)	half-life	nuclear spin	representative isotopic composition (mole fraction)	range of natural variation (mole fraction)
nuclide symbol	excitation energy			half-life	nuclear spin	representative isotopic composition (mole fraction)	range of natural variation (mole fraction)
Tc-99	43	56	98.9062547(21)	2.111(12)E+5 a	9/2+
Tc-99m	142.6832(11) keV			6.0058(12) h	1/2-

Fair challenge

nuclide symbol	Z(p)	N(n)	isotopic mass (u)	half-life	nuclear spin	representative isotopic composition (mole fraction)	range of natural variation (mole fraction)	excitation energy
Tc-99	43	56	98.9062547(21)	2.111(12)E+5 a	9/2+
Tc-99m				6.0058(12) h	1/2-			142.6832(11) keV

GraemeLeggett 15:37, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

I don't think it's an improvement. It does only add empty space, and the table already is rather wide on small screens. Do you really feel a split of the columns is necessary? Maybe color-code the corresponding cells or something like that instead? Femto 11:11, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

Monoisotopic

I strongly suggest that a clear definition of "monoisotopic" be provided: not "only one isotope exists", but "only one stable isotope exists". Comments? DS 14:55, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

The definition from reference [3] p.708 is used: "An element is considered to be monoisotopic by CAWIA if it has one and only one isotope that is either stable or has a half-life greater than 1×10¹⁰ a." Your change to isotopes of fluorine seems well enough, feel free to expand them all to keep the notes consistent. Femto 15:22, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Isotope symbol naming convention

What is the proper way to write an isotope symbol on Wikipedia? The Wikipedia:Naming conventions does not address this matter. The main article Isotope uses the superscript form, ¹⁸O. The individual isotope pages, e.g., Isotopes of oxygen, use the 0-18 form. Best wishes, Walter Siegmund (talk) 19:11, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

See also Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Elements#Preferred isotope notation?: IUPAC suggest to use either written-out oxygen-18 or superscripted ¹⁸O, but not O-18. The element articles have been mostly edited accordingly, while the isotope pages still are in the plain-text format which I initially used for easier editing; if you want to polish the coding, be my guest. Femto 20:04, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

I ran into this issue while discussing the oxygen-18 to oxygen-16 ratio as a temperature indicator in ice cores from the Quelccaya Ice Cap. We have decided to use the name, oxygen-18, rather than the symbol, ¹⁸O, since the former should be more easily understood by the average reader. Thank you for explaining the convention. I'll try to help update some of the isotope pages. Best wishes, Walter Siegmund (talk) 01:45, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

Sweet, by the way - I've been trying to avoid the work for months now, take as much time as you want. :) Watch the isomer notation though, the "m"s should go into the sup. While you're at it, you can also tackle the exponentials if you like, (see isotopes of lithium), but that's a whole different load of work. Femto 10:53, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

encyclopedic style

Much as I hate to quibble (yeah, right :-) on such yeoman work of obvious utility, it seems to me that tables of data are not the same thing as encyclopedia articles. A stickler would probably want to move the whole project to Wikisource.

Personally I don't have any such bomb-throwing intent here, but I wonder if it would be too much trouble to add a lead section, along the lines of WP:LEAD, to each article. Just a little pro-forma thing, to make them look slightly more like articles and slightly less like CRC tables. E.g at isotopes of cowabungium you could put something like:

Cowabungium is a rare venus element with 127 stable isotopes, 93 long-lived radioactive isotopes, and 27 isotopes so short-lived that only their decay products can be observed. The stable form of cowabungium is useful in bridge construction and forms the central ligand of vitamin X-23. Cowabungium-451 is used in radiotherapy for impacted molars.

It seems to me that this would be a relatively small amount of effort, and would have a significant impact in terms of bringing the articles stylistically in line with the rest of the encyclopedia. Whaddaya think? --Trovatore 22:07, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

I'd like to see that too, and admit that, aside from the data, these pages technically still are stubs. The primary reason for their creation was to serve as a reference and as an extension to the isotope table in the element infoboxes. The long-term goal should be to outsource the whole Isotopes section from the element articles to the isotopes pages, leaving a proper summary of only the notable uses—for a general article about the element, some of the current content there is rather technical and specific. Or since this might leave the section quite dull for a few elements, integrate the remaining isotope information in an altogether different way and reorganize the element articles (this should be coordinated with the Elements Project though). However, considering my writing skills (How long did it take you to come up with cowabungium; bridge construction and impacted molars?—I wish I had your imagination… :) even a cleanup of the existing text would be quite a task to me. Any volunteers welcome. Femto 12:24, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Project directory

Hello. The WikiProject Council has recently updated the Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Directory. This new directory includes a variety of categories and subcategories which will, with luck, potentially draw new members to the projects who are interested in those specific subjects. Please review the directory and make any changes to the entries for your project that you see fit. There is also a directory of portals, at User:B2T2/Portal, listing all the existing portals. Feel free to add any of them to the portals or comments section of your entries in the directory. The three columns regarding assessment, peer review, and collaboration are included in the directory for both the use of the projects themselves and for that of others. Having such departments will allow a project to more quickly and easily identify its most important articles and its articles in greatest need of improvement. If you have not already done so, please consider whether your project would benefit from having departments which deal in these matters. It is my hope that all the changes to the directory can be finished by the first of next month. Please feel free to make any changes you see fit to the entries for your project before then. If you should have any questions regarding this matter, please do not hesitate to contact me. Thank you. B2T2 23:58, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Stablepedia

Beginning cross-post.

See Wikipedia talk:Version 1.0 Editorial Team#Stablepedia. If you wish to comment, please comment there. ★TWO YEARS OF MESSED ROCKER★ 03:42, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

End cross-post. Please do not comment more in this section.

Decay modes

I'd like to request that these be included explicitly on the isotopes pages, not just on the element pages. The energy of decay etc. is a bit more work - just the principal mode would be fine. Chemical Rubber Company handbook used to be great for compilations of this kind of data. --Cedders^tk 10:05, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

It won't be me who adds it, sorry. I originally considered to cite this data, but all these decay modes with their peculiarities and abbreviations in the sources are beyond my expertise. Femto 21:04, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

I'd like to second this request. It's useful to know how the less common isotopes decay. —Gordon P. Hemsley→✉ 20:42, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia Day Awards

Hello, all. It was initially my hope to try to have this done as part of Esperanza's proposal for an appreciation week to end on Wikipedia Day, January 15. However, several people have once again proposed the entirety of Esperanza for deletion, so that might not work. It was the intention of the Appreciation Week proposal to set aside a given time when the various individuals who have made significant, valuable contributions to the encyclopedia would be recognized and honored. I believe that, with some effort, this could still be done. My proposal is to, with luck, try to organize the various WikiProjects and other entities of wikipedia to take part in a larger celebrartion of its contributors to take place in January, probably beginning January 15, 2007. I have created yet another new subpage for myself (a weakness of mine, I'm afraid) at User talk:Badbilltucker/Appreciation Week where I would greatly appreciate any indications from the members of this project as to whether and how they might be willing and/or able to assist in recognizing the contributions of our editors. Thank you for your attention. Badbilltucker 17:40, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

IRC

Hi, for all those chemists who are active on IRC, Rifleman_82 and I have set up a channel on IRC for chemistry on wikipedia. You can find us here: the wikichem channel. To be able to talk with other online chemists there, you need an IRC program, like mIRC, the Chatzilla plugin for firefox, Opera (built in), and there will probably be more programs out there. At the moment User:Rifleman_82 and I are the 'keepers/moderators' of the channel, but anyone can enter and talk! Hope to see you there! --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 10:35, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

Proposed merge of isotope tables

As a member of a project whose scope includes Isotope table (complete) and/or Isotope table (divided) in the past, your input is needed. User:Greg L is proposing (and prematurely executing) a merge of the two tables, each about 50k, into one table of over 100k. I am opposing it, and no other editors have commented yet. Please come to Talk:Isotope table (complete) and offer your opinion. Thanks, JWB (talk) 00:27, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Oxygen isotopes for deletion

Oxygen-24 , Oxygen-15 , Oxygen-13 - have been nominated for deletion. 70.29.208.129 (talk) 07:15, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

Templates for isotope lists?

Are there some templates for isotope pages? I think we could need them. Similar to the element box templates, a template could be used for the nice lists of isotopes. --Hokanomono ✉ 10:01, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

Pageview stats

After a recent request, I added WikiProject Isotopes to the list of projects to compile monthly pageview stats for. The data is the same used by http://stats.grok.se/en/ but the program is different, and includes the aggregate views from all redirects to each page. The stats are at Wikipedia:WikiProject Isotopes/Popular pages.

The page will be updated monthly with new data. The edits aren't marked as bot edits, so they will show up in watchlists. You can view more results, request a new project be added to the list, or request a configuration change for this project using the toolserver tool. If you have any comments or suggestions, please let me know. Thanks! Mr.Z-man 04:15, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

Element books

WP:ELEMENTS started creating books on each individual elements. Since there are a lot of them, any help would be very much appreciated. Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 02:34, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

Your comments requested

We really need input from other people on the isotope and nuclide talk pages and the possibilities of their merger, transfer of info from one to the other, or continued split with few changes. Please see talk:isotope. S B H arris 18:42, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

Merge?

Anybody still watching this page against the idea of merging this into WP:ELEM? Nergaal (talk) 07:23, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

Probably not. Lanthanum-138 (talk) 08:21, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

Where were those isotopes referenced?

Today when I was looking on Isotopes of meitnerium, I checked out several links on "References" section below, but still several isotopes' data were non-experimental and weren't cited any sources, like ²⁷⁰Mt, ²⁷¹Mt, ²⁷²Mt, ²⁷³Mt and some more. Should these data be considered valid?

I also found such information in the Nuclear Physics A source:

In case no experimental data is available, trends in the systematics of neighboring nuclides have been used, whenever possible, to derive estimated values (labeled in the database as non-experimental).
— From this source

I would like to know what is the "trend" and where is its source?--Inspector (talk) 13:10, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

Isotope charts are unclear

(copied from WT:PHYS) Look at isotopes of bismuth (for example). What does the "-" means in "spin 9/2-"? Maybe it's parity, but the article doesn't say. The article says that parentheses mean "weak assignment arguments". What does that mean? Almost the same table-explanations -- which I find inadequate -- are in all these "Isotopes of..." articles. I don't want to make the same edits in >100 articles! Is there any easier way? Who made these articles in the first place, and how? A bot, or superhuman patience? --Steve (talk) 20:24, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

Phase 2

Phase 1 (creating the "isotopes of X" articles and some articles for the more important individual isotopes) was finished some time ago. Now the page should be updated, to note that the project has moved to the phase of improving and expanding the articles. (The "Isotopes of X" articles could definitely be improved and changed from lists to articles – see Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Elements#"Isotopes of" articles.) Double sharp (talk) 05:33, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

Popular pages tool update

As of January, the popular pages tool has moved from the Toolserver to Wikimedia Tool Labs. The code has changed significantly from the Toolserver version, but users should notice few differences. Please take a moment to look over your project's list for any anomalies, such as pages that you expect to see that are missing or pages that seem to have more views than expected. Note that unlike other tools, this tool aggregates all views from redirects, which means it will typically have higher numbers. (For January 2014 specifically, 35 hours of data is missing from the WMF data, which was approximated from other dates. For most articles, this should yield a more accurate number. However, a few articles, like ones featured on the Main Page, may be off).

Web tools, to replace the ones at tools:~alexz/pop, will become available over the next few weeks at toollabs:popularpages. All of the historical data (back to July 2009 for some projects) has been copied over. The tool to view historical data is currently partially available (assessment data and a few projects may not be available at the moment). The tool to add new projects to the bot's list is also available now (editing the configuration of current projects coming soon). Unlike the previous tool, all changes will be effective immediately. OAuth is used to authenticate users, allowing only regular users to make changes to prevent abuse. A visible history of configuration additions and changes is coming soon. Once tools become fully available, their toolserver versions will redirect to Labs.

If you have any questions, want to report any bugs, or there are any features you would like to see that aren't currently available on the Toolserver tools, see the updated FAQ or contact me on my talk page. Mr.Z-bot (talk) (for Mr.Z-man) 04:57, 23 February 2014 (UTC)