Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment edit

  This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 12 January 2021 and 10 March 2021. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Emma Ambrogi.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 20:22, 16 January 2022 (UTC)Reply

An Internal Combustion Engine edit

I found a spelling mistake. The article describes a internal combustion engine when surely it means an internal combustion engine. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.169.17.39 (talk) 22:58, 26 August 2009 (UTC)Reply

Improper use of "a" instead of "an" again. edit

"In most a exothermic combustion reactions this heat would simple propagate the reaction catalytically." In this case why include the "a" at all. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.169.17.39 (talk) 23:07, 26 August 2009 (UTC)Reply

I fixed the "a" you mentioned, but knowing my grammar I probably have left mistakes on this page and many others. Next time you see a mistake like that feel free to fix it yourself, it will probably be faster than writing a note. Furthermore why not get an account so you can help improve Wikipedia in anyway that is convenient of fun for you, e.g. fixing grammar, finding places were a more detailed or less detailed explanation is needed, fixing the flow of language, or adding missing content. There are many policies to learn but other editors will always be willing to help with that. From my American point of view eventually you'll be one more person pushing British spellings but there are worse things than that, hope you get an account.--OMCV (talk) 01:00, 27 August 2009 (UTC)Reply

External links modified edit

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified one external link on Electrocatalyst. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

This message was posted before February 2018. After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{source check}} (last update: 18 January 2022).

  • If you have discovered URLs which were erroneously considered dead by the bot, you can report them with this tool.
  • If you found an error with any archives or the URLs themselves, you can fix them with this tool.

Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 03:12, 19 September 2017 (UTC)Reply

External links modified (January 2018) edit

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified one external link on Electrocatalyst. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

This message was posted before February 2018. After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{source check}} (last update: 18 January 2022).

  • If you have discovered URLs which were erroneously considered dead by the bot, you can report them with this tool.
  • If you found an error with any archives or the URLs themselves, you can fix them with this tool.

Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 02:40, 24 January 2018 (UTC)Reply

Planned updates to the article (January 2021) edit

Hello Wikipedians! I'm planning to work on updating this article as part of a Wikieducation project in a course I'm taking. Here's my evaluation of the article and plans for updates. This article has several content issues that could be improved. One of the primary issues with this article is that it is somewhat out of date, with the most recent sources dating from 2011. A large number of reviews on electrocatalysts have been published since then, and inclusion of recent developments and an overview of state-of-the-art materials would be beneficial to the article. In addition, the article focuses primarily on electrocatalysis for water splitting, which is only a subset of electrocatalytic processes and materials. The only background information is related to the background of the electrochemical oxidation and reduction of water. The article would benefit from a more comprehensive summary of the different uses of electrocatalysts and more general background and theory about electrocatalysis. The tone is generally neutral, but the emphasis on water splitting indicates that previous authors were primarily interested in that field. The citation links all work, but as previously mentioned, the article could benefit from more up-to-date sources. There are also a few uncited claims in the “context” section. I plan to improve this article by expanding the background to include a more comprehensive theoretical explanation of electrocatalysis. I will also add a section describing CO2 reduction I also plan to add sections for the variety of classes of nanomaterials that can act as electrocatalysts. Many of the sources I will include will be review articles and perspectives published in the last 3-4 years. I plan to add figures showing some of the kinetic and thermodynamic principles of electrocatalysis, as well as schematics that describe different types of electrocatalysts. Emma Ambrogi (talk) 22:43, 29 January 2021 (UTC)Reply


Hello Emma, I have a suggestion for your chemdraw image. I think that if you were to hit "clean-up structure" it would make the benzene rings more symmetrical and it would improve the image. Also, I think it may be helpful to break up the background and theory section into two smaller sections. DownToBismuth (talk) 18:52, 7 March 2021 (UTC)Reply

@Emma Ambrogi: Most of the article is verging on academic hype, to use polite language. Most readers do not come to Wikipedia to read about claims from the ivory tower. Readers want to know what is really going on in the real world, i.e. large scale, commercial operations that affect our daily lives for good or for worse. If you want to write more about academic research, that angle is heavily reviewed in Chem Rev and some books. But most of it is naval gazing. For example, no homogeneous electrocatalyst is used for anything commercially. So be strong, dont believe the hype. This topic is ruled by engineers, not chemists.--Smokefoot (talk) 22:32, 7 March 2021 (UTC)Reply
@Smokefoot: ::@Emma Ambrogi: Hi Emma, thank you for this article! I found it incredibly informative for someone who isn't familiar with the topic. I find that all too often people like to gatekeep fields, such as chemistry and engineering, that should be accessible for all. Our fields will die out if we don't encourage non-experts to learn about new topics and if we don't encourage established experts to branch out of their fields of expertise. To the comment about the applicability of electrocatalysts, I believe Smokefoot is making a hasty and unwarranted generalization about readers and fundamental research. Many advances that are used in daily life began as ideas that the scientific community refused to acknowledge (i.e. concept of infinity, quantum mechanics, etc.) or that weren't immediately applicable (i.e. Large Hadron Collider). So please keep pushing fundamental science forward! Smokefoot's comment was ruled by an overinflated ego and no real suggestions for improvement, to use polite language. Bahanabread (talk) 15:32, 9 March 2021 (UTC)bahanabreadReply
Pretentious crap from a fellow student. A student! The article, at least until I dived in, revealed ZERO about a mature field of technology that strongly influences the environment and economy. If you want to help non-experts, then please do not decieve your fellow students and, worse, Wikipedia readers about the value of most of this article. Write about real electrocatalysts that are really used vs baloney. Its the pathway for helping readers vs propagating naivity. Also recall, Wikipedia is not a textbook, so remove the explanations. WP:NOT. --Smokefoot (talk) 17:36, 9 March 2021 (UTC)Reply

Hi Emma, I found that you showed the same sentence "In this process, the reaction is broken into two half-reactions which occur at separate electrodes. In this situation the reactant's energy is directly converted to electricity" twice in Part 4.1 Water Splitting/ Hydrogen Evolution. Please check it again.Huilin Qing (talk) 10:57, 8 March 2021 (UTC)Reply

Reviews and books only, please edit

According to chemical abstracts, the topic "electrocatalyst" is the basis of 39,316 reports, 1357 reviews and books have appeared since 2000. Stick to such sources. --Smokefoot (talk) 14:02, 8 March 2021 (UTC)Reply