Wikipedia:Peer review/Astatine/archive1

Astatine

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I've listed this article for peer review because I'm going to send it to FAC soon (fluorine, however, is not forgotten). The article isn't very large, but there's little to add, as it seems to me. It may need check for prose strength and bordering issues. Any help is appreciated!

Thanks, R8R Gtrs (talk) 11:58, 7 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

{{doing}} Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 15:57, 22 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I've moved in on this, although I wouldn't mind my distinguished colleague's eye on the article as well. Some points:

Prose strength was...weak. No slur on the primary author, who's done an admirable job working in a second language, but the GA reviewer really should have flagged a lot more prose. Mostly unidiomatic, which is not so bad, but occasionally a bit ungrammatical. You can look at the diffs to get an idea of what I was changing. Some of the things that stood out:
- A repeated misspelling of "treating" as "threating".
- "Irritating" bismuth is very unidiomatic. "Irritation" in English implies an animate object.
- A certain amount of roundabout prose. E.g., I changed "For the first time, astatine was produced" to "Astatine was first produced". It doesn't come naturally to scientists, but sometimes you want to make a straightforward statement and not hedge it too much.
The sources referring to web pages probably wouldn't fly at FAC. I've managed to eliminate both of them.
I consolidated a number of references where the same reference served for multiple adjacent sentence in the same paragraph. The sentence-by-sentence referencing, when the reference is the same, is a bit overwhelming.
The information on the decay chains kept on getting repeated in the article. I moved the "Isotopes" section up as a sub-section of "Characteristics" which let me cut down on the duplication a bit.
A number of ranges were expressed with em-dashes rather than the correct en-dashes, and some measurements did not have a non-breaking space between the measurement and the unit.
There was a serious misunderstanding in the "History" section. E.g., "He thought the element to be a member of 'thorium series,' but no such series is known today." is self-contradictory–it links to "thorium series"! That section was probably the weakest in terms of prose quality and in accurately conveying the character of the claimed discoveries. I've fixed it up as best I can, but some buttressing with additional primary or secondary sources might not hurt, for instance by citing more of Minder or Karlik & Bernert's papers as necessary.
I am a little uneasy about saying, in the lead, that the "negative charge is transferred to hydrogen". That, to me, sounds more like ionization than polarity. I can't immediately think of a more felicitous phrasing, though.
In the "Isotopes" section, the last paragraph, talking about the nuclear isomers, is rather confusing (at least to those trained up in O-chem, like me, who may be a little weak on our nuclear). A little more background on the distinction between the two, so that the "ground states" mentioned are well-defined, would be appreciated.
I don't know what the relevant MOS prose conventions are for the use of names versus formulas at different points in the article (say, astatine iodide vs AtI), but that seems like the sort of thing that would come up at FAC.
In the "Chemical reactivity and compounds" section, I feel like "via equilibrium, other species such as..." is missing something. Should there be something about chlorine or chloride after the word equilibrium?
I wonder if "see table to the right" and "see table below" are acceptable, given that Wikipedia might be fed through screenreaders or other methods of mangling layout.
In "Production and uses," when you say "maximum energy of the reaction," is this a reference to the energy given the alpha particles by the cyclotron?
In the same section, you say that "astatine-211 is important in prostate cancer treatment," but prostate cancer never appears in the table below. Does prostate cancer treatment in particular deserve to be singled out in that paragraph above and beyond other applications?
The Hammond reference needs a page number.
Can some of the information from Inorganic Chemistry be sourced to the CRC Handbook instead? I feel as though that would be preferable.

I hope this helps you in your quest to bring the article to FA. Choess (talk) 06:35, 26 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your help! Will try to fix the remaining (to be done by me) points ASAP. Really thanks, it's great.--R8R Gtrs (talk) 19:26, 2 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Ruhrfisch comments: Thanks for your work on this R8R Gtrs, and thanks to Choess for his edits - this is looking pretty good; here are some suggestions for improvement.

A model article is useful for ideas and examples to follow - as I am sure you know, there are a number of FAs on elements which would be good models.
I was a little inspired by francium, with a few layout changes
The lead seems a little sparse to me and could probably be expanded somewhat per WP:LEAD. My rule of thumb is to include every header in the lead in some way, but I see nothing in the current lead about production and uses, for example.
Enlarged, but not yet satisfied with it. To be re-checked later.
There are a few things that I expected to find but did not. I assumed that the "-ine" ending of the name came from its place in the halogens, but this is not mentioned. Similarly, I assumed that the element would form a diatomic species like all the other halogens (At₂), but this is not mentioned either.
Hmmm, very well. Added
Avoid needless repetition - the Characteristics and Isotopes sections both give the actual half life of the most stable isotope. I think it is OK to repeat that 210 is the most stable, but do not see the need to start two sections is a row with the fact that its half life is 8.1 hours.
Is my solution satisfactory?
I know this is obvious to chemists, but will probably need a ref at FAC however, chemical research into astatine is limited by the very small quantities available, which is a consequence of its extremely short half-life. There are any number of good textbooks on Inorganic Chemistry / the Elements which seem to me likely to include such broad statements (Greenwood and Earnshaw's Chemistry of the Elements, or Cotton and Wilkinson's Inorganic Chemistry are two possibilities).
I think that including some more book refs will also be useful at FAC, where sources are checked closely
I know that science articles have somewhat different standards, but I think it is useful to include English units for comparison - this is done for grams and ounces, but not with temperatures in Celsius
Yes, I never deal with them IRL, so I forget sometimes. Added.
For comparisons, would it help to give the values for other elements / species? So for example the melting and boiling points of iodine might help for comparison, or the electronegativities of H and I might help later too.
Would it help to give the actual diproportionation reaction equation at the end of Characteristics?
No problem to add it, but I ain't sure it'll be good, for the text. The section seems a little compacted (espresso if Wikipedia were coffee), and this is not a very important/necessary detail.
I would link alpha emitter to either alpha particle or alpha decay (as beta decay is already linked). I see alpha emission is linked later, so alpha particle might be the way to go here.
Fixed the whole [[Alpha blah-blah-blah-...|...]] linking issue by giving for alpha particle and alpha decay one wikilink each, at first appearance.
I think it would be more concise to actually list the five isotopes here In total, only five isotopes have half-lives exceeding one hour, all having mass numbers between 207 and 211.
What'bout "astatine-207 to -211"?
For the second paragraph of the Isotopes section, since all At on earth is the product of decay chains, I would probably start with the decay chains and describe this in more detail. See WP:PCR
This'll belong to Natural occurrence. Will think if this (Natural occurrence) section needs enlargement with this.
The first nuclear isomers sentence is confusing - I think it is better to go from the general to the specific, so perhaps there could be a sentence briefly explaining what nuclear isomers are, then talk about them in general for At, then give specifics. I think I owuld say that of the 32 known isotopes, X isotopes have a total of 23 nuclear isomers.
This makes it sound almost as if Mendeleev predicted eka-Iodine (which he did not): The space under iodine was empty, and many scientists tried to identify the element in nature; in Mendeleev's nomenclature, it was called "eka-iodine," from Sanskrit eka, "one," to imply it was one space under iodine.[6] Could be clearer
I think it owuld help to start the second paragraph of history with some sort of general statement that several incorrect claims of discovery were made initially
Since the device has not been mentioned previously, this is a bit confusing In 1934, however, H. G. MacPherson of University of California, Berkeley disproved the effectiveness of Allison's device and the validity of this discovery.[10]
For the claimed "dakin" would it help to add a sentence that the Thorium series is now known to not include any isotopes of At?
Awkward - also avoid passive voice if possible The first correctly assigned claim took its place in 1940, and was done by Dale R. Corson, Kenneth Ross MacKenzie, and Emilio Segrè at the same University of California, Berkeley. At this point there have been two paragraphs of erroneous claims, so I might also make it clearer this is finally Astatine, so perhaps something like In 1940 Dale R. Corson, Kenneth Ross MacKenzie, and Emilio Segrè finally isolated the element at the University of California, Berkeley.
Like this phrasing. Added.
Father isotope sounds odd - is this the normnal modern term? Perhaps parent isotope?
Parent isotope, of course.
Watch WP:Overlinking - alpha decay is linked twice, bismuth at least thrice
A few words fixed.
Much of the Natural occurrence material seems like it would fit in well with the Isotopes section - could these be combined (Isotopes and natural occurrence)?
Well, I'd rather not now. Will try to figure out during my next active Wikisession, however. Will write why not if I fail.
Depth of 10 miles - needs a conversion and the article uses metric first for all other units
Good point. Fixed
MOS says not to sandwich text between images, but the Np decay chain image and the HAt image sandwich text on my monitor - could HAt be moved down a little?
Tried to figure out but failed. Removed the HAt image (it is clear how a diatomic molecule looks like)
A dipole moment in a chemical bond is usually pictured as resulting from partial positive and partial negative charges - I owuld use "partial negative charge" instead of "negative end" in The hydrogen astatide molecule has been calculated to have a dipole moment of 0.06 D, with the negative end on hydrogen.
Good phrasing! Added, of course
MOS says to link on first occurrence in the lead and again in the bopdy of the article - link to iodine in Astatine is known to react with its lighter homologues iodine, bromine, and chlorine in the vapor state;... is way too late
Thanks. Done
Confusing - just said AtCl can be made in the gas phase, then No report of AtCl preparation has been shown, but oxidation of the element with dichromate (in nitric acid solution) showed that adding chloride turned the astatine into a molecule, either AtCl or AtOCl;... which starts by saying preapration of AtCl has not been reported, then maybe it has been prepared after all...??
Weird dash The lower oxidation states are the starting point for astatine—oxygen bonds:...
Fixed: an en-dash now.
I realize this is a standard measure for amount of radioactive substances, but is it possible to give a gram equivalent (as that would be more accessible to most readers)? modern techniques allow production runs of 2 terabecquerel.[32]
Added.
Avoid needless repetition The most important isotope is now astatine-211, being the only one to find a commercial use. and in the next paragraph The newly formed astatine-211 is important in prostate cancer treatment, and, in fact, is the only important isotope of the element.
I would link things like adenocarcinoma and compartmental tumor in the table
All bluelinks possible added.
WHy are there 10 or 11 book sources (good), but only one of them is listed in Bibliography?
'Cause (as I remember) Biblography is only for the sources you use more than once, and serves for not repeating the name of a book millions times. Only one book is used in its different places (pages), so one is in the bibliography. Note ref 2 (for example) to see how it works.
Please make sure that the existing text includes no copyright violations, plagiarism, or close paraphrasing. For more information on this please see Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2009-04-13/Dispatches. (This is a general warning given in all peer reviews, in view of previous problems that have risen over copyvios.)

Hope this helps. If my comments are useful, please consider peer reviewing an article, especially one at Wikipedia:Peer review/backlog (which is how I found this article). I do not watch peer reviews, so if you have questions or comments, please contact me on my talk page. Yours, Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 15:23, 27 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

My replies are usually done for me (as a note to self, what's done/to be done, for each point). Anyone is welcome to re-reply, however, especially if I get anything wrong or a point is actually a question--R8R Gtrs (talk) 19:26, 2 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]