Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Electron/archive1

The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was not promoted by Maralia 23:35, 18 January 2009 [1].

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Electron

Nominator(s): RJH (talk)

This is listed as a wikipedia vital article. As it is an extensive subject that touches physics, chemistry, electronics and many other fields, information above the basic physical properties of the electron are written in the summary style; these will rely on other wikipedia topics to be better developed. For the most part the current article discusses the widely-accepted particle physics theory of the electron as given by quantum electrodynamics and the standard model. Still, I hope the material is approachable by readers who don't have a background in college-level physics.

After an extensive re-write, this article has undergone a peer review and is listed as a good article. I believe it satisfies the feature article criteria, so I'm nominating it as a candidate. Please take a look and let me know if there issues I can address. Thank you.RJH (talk) 22:50, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

• Support - As the GA reviewer, I had like, three problems with the article. The prose is brilliant as ever, and I think the article, if anything is confusing, that it might be over-technical for the general reader. Ceran^→→ 23:16, 14 January 2009 (UTC)
  • Thank you for your review and the support.—RJH (talk)
• Support The article is very well referenced and what I did read was interesting and informative. It is slightly complicated for the general reader, but it is explained clearly and the sections are not too long. The layout is nice and overall it is an excellent article, and I love it when vital articles are improved. Reywas92^Talk 23:30, 14 January 2009 (UTC)
  • Thank you.—RJH (talk)
• Image review — just some slight issues as follow:
  • File:Asymmetricwave2.png — lacking in references
    • This illustration was generated by a member of the Physics WikiProject in order to illustrate a point in the text. I've requested information on the software package used to generate the plot and, if appropriate, I'll add that as an additional reference on the image page. Otherwise I may have to remove it.—RJH (talk)
      • I have added the full code used to generate the image to the CC description page of the image. I have also added a reference to that page to back up the actual formula used. (TimothyRias (talk) 13:17, 19 January 2009 (UTC))
  • File:Lightning over Oradea Romania 2.jpg — should it not be "Mircea Madau" as the releaser of the public domain license instead of his or her username "Nelumadau"?
    • Mmm... that seems a little out of scope. Perhaps it should be discussed with the releaser?—RJH (talk) 17:01, 16 January 2009 (UTC)
  • File:Lorentz factor.svg — not a big issue, but putting the equation of the Lorentz factor as a function of velocity in the source parameter would be helpful.
    • It was in there as a footnote, but it looks like an editor has put it back inline with the text.—RJH (talk) 20:17, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

All images are fine (above issues are just niggles, not opposable in the sense of whether the images are correctly licensed or attributed). Diagrams about theories and workings of devices are basic and need not expertise to verify, or come with appropriate references. Jappalang (talk) 02:51, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

• Oppose for now. It needs a little work.

• References: What is this pp. 72? And pp. 6–39 to 6–40? The latter may mean something, but it is non-standard if it does. The reference section has several doubled periods – for example in Numerous (1986). Soukhanov, Anne H.. ed.. Word Mysteries & Histories, which appears to be an anomalous reference in any case. All such doubles should be fixed. Otherwise, references look clean enough.
  • I fixed the first. The second is the page numbering scheme used by CRC (I used "to" to avoid the ambiguity of an ndash). A few of the double-periods are an annoying artifact of the cite template and I'll ask them to fix it. I repaired the others by expanding abbr.—RJH (talk) 20:23, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

• Yes, that is a besetting difficulty with these templates. Double periods have to be tracked down and adjusted manually. I still don't understand pp. 6–39 to 6–40. What does it mean? Whatever it means, it will not do as it stands. If the source uses an en dash like that, it is destined for trouble! Perhaps, in that case, we must have recourse to [sic], and to single uses of p.: p. 6–39 to p. 6–40 [sic].–_⊥^{¡ɐɔıʇǝo}Noetica!^T– 22:35, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

[Response by Physchim62 moved to where this point is taken up again, below.–_⊥^{¡ɐɔıʇǝo}Noetica!^T– 11:50, 16 January 2009 (UTC)]

Overall, the rest of the prose seems to need a little tightening of the same sort; but a lead in particular should always be well polished and to the point. This is especially so for such a technically difficult topic, where the reader can so easily be put off by obscurities, or by detail that only the specialist considers essential. I may may have more to say later.

–_⊥^{¡ɐɔıʇǝo}Noetica!^T– 12:14, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback. I've made many of the modifications you have suggested, but not all.—RJH (talk) 21:38, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

Fine, RJH. The lead reads more smoothly with those few adjustments. Of course I was not committed to the exact details that I proposed, and I like the compromises you have hit upon. I'll examine the rest of the article more closely, and come back with some more. Looking good!

Great, I look forward to your additional comments. There is always room for improvement.—RJH (talk) 17:01, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

I would advise a hard space with all page numbers and the like: pp. 77–88.

–_⊥^{¡ɐɔıʇǝo}Noetica!^T– 22:49, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

The "pp." is introduced via the 'cite' templates, which reads the "pages=" variable and formats it accordingly. I'll add another request to the folks who maintain that template.—RJH (talk) 17:01, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

---

• Comment does the first sentence need to be cited? It's not like anyone is going to challenge that. Sceptre ^(talk) 12:40, 15 January 2009 (UTC)
  • Just playing it safe and covering all the bases; there are plenty of editors who will argue every little detail. Thanks.—RJH (talk) 21:41, 15 January 2009 (UTC)
    • To be honest, that's the fundamental characteristics of a particle. You learn that in high-school (Britain, 11-16) science. Good idea to cite it in the article proper, not so much in the lead section. Sceptre ^(talk) 19:35, 16 January 2009 (UTC)
      • Well thank goodness that all of our readers have been through the British school system then. ;-) I think what I'll do is just let the Weinberg (2003) reference do the work. The citation you find objectionable has been deleted.—RJH (talk) 19:57, 16 January 2009 (UTC)
• Weak oppose. The overall idea and general layout are good, and most of the prose is excellent. I agree with the nominator that the article must rely on summary style to a large extent – people write whole books about the electron at roughly this level of presentation!

However, the article seems to get mixed up with the question of "what should be discussed where", leaving little bits of the explanation scattered throughout the text. AWB counted 53 multiple wikilinks for me, which I think is a symptom of the lack of an overall plan for the material (beyond that given by the section headers).

Sigh. At first glance that seems a bit harsh. I did have a certain philosophy that I tried to follow in laying out the article; perhaps I didn't succeed as well as I'd hoped. Multiple wikilinks are allowed. I did check through the wikilinks at one point and culled out most of the excess. Hopefully the duplicate links are in the nature of: a link in the lead and a link down in the meat of the article. A few may be alternate name links to the same material.—RJH (talk) 21:52, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

To take one example, wave–particle duality is discussed at three or four points, none of them really convincingly. The Quantum mechanics section starts "As with all particles, electrons can act as waves." – if the reader already knows that all particles exhibit wave–particle duality, they are unlikely to need any further explanation, but it is a bit rough on the high-school student.

The remainder of the paragraph provides an explanation. The term "wave–particle duality" is also wikilinked to the appropriate article, which can be used for further enlightenment. How is this unclear?—RJH (talk) 21:52, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

The number of references in the infobox and the lead should be reduced as far as possible. It looks strange, to say the least, to find the article references starting at number 15. All of the important points in the lead and most of the numerical values in the infobox are discussed elsewhere in the article and could be referenced there. They is no need to reference both the NIST site and the CODATA paper (see {{CODATA2006}}) for the values: I would suggest just linking to the CODATA paper to save space (and because it gives more discussion than the NIST site).

The NIST and CODATA references have been consolidated to a single cite. I cleaned up the remainder consistent with WP:LEADCITE. The artifact of starting the cite tags with the "[15]" is a function of how wikipedia referencing operates and is not a deliberate act by the editors. There's not much I can do about that.—RJH (talk) 20:13, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

In the Observation section, I was suprised to see no mention of the hydrogen spectrum as a methods of "observing" the behaviour of a single electron, both for historical and practical reasons. I'm not sure that the Lund images add anything to the discussion, but the authors themselves have to admit that "The filmed sequence shows the energy distribution of the electron and is therefore not a film in the usual sense." [2] Their paper in Phys. Rev. Lett. describes it as "imaging the electron momentum distribution resulting from a single ionization event", which is hardly the same as "filming an electron"!

The spectral lines of hydrogen were already discussed in the history. It seemed logical to focus on observations of unbound electrons, rather than atoms. (The latter is already discussed on the atom article.) I tweaked the text regarding the Lund image very slightly.—RJH (talk) 20:13, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

The first paragraph of the Applications section doesn't appear to say anything useful at all, and should be put out of its misery with the Delete key. "Virtually every developed technology depends upon electrons." Yes, well, virtually every undeveloped technology as well! In fact, virtually everything depends on electrons, if you look at it that way! Or depends on energy, or depends on photons, or depends on number theory, or depends on the will of an unknowable supreme deity, depending on your PoV and the article you're trying to write!

I removed it, as it is more or less evident from prior information on the page.—RJH (talk) 20:13, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

There are several minor problems with the formatting of physical quantities. Commas should not be used to separate thousands if you're also using a full point as a decimal separator. Neither should centered dots be used to express the product of two units if there is a point as the decimal separator in the numerical part. In both cases, thinspaces are unambiguous and so preferred. I saw several cases (not universal) of hyphens instead of minus signs in negative exponants. When e is used as the symbol for elementary charge, it is in italics, but when e is used as a symbol for the electron it is in upright font (the infobox was the error I noted).

Alas, I'm weary of fighting the battle over how numbers should be formatted. The comma is the result of the 'val' template, and the format is in compliance with Wikipedia:NUMBERS#Large_numbers. The hyphen is equivalent to the HTML − tag. I fixed the charge entry in the infobox; thanks for pointing it out.—RJH (talk) 21:57, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

In brief, I think the article is almost there, but still needs a fairly extensive copyedit by a scientifically-knowledgeable editor: not to imply that the nominator isn't scientifically-knowledgeable (!), merely to emphasize that I see more problems that WP:MOS formatting. Physchim62 (talk) 13:00, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

The article has been examined by multiple scientifically-knowledgeable editors. I posted notices to the Physics, Chemistry and Electronics WikiProjects asking for more input; hopefully that will be forthcoming. Thank you for the feedback.—RJH (talk) 22:12, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

With any long-standing article, editors who are familiar with it tend to subconsciously "skip" passages, and so are not really the best-placed to do a copy edit. Leaving aside (for a moment) matters of style and of opinion as to what should be included where, I found the following scientific points which seem at best dubious to me, and which have probably (unless I'm the one in the wrong, of course) been overlooked by many pairs of eyes. Physchim62 (talk) 00:48, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

Comments -

• A number of your book refs are lacking page numbers. I noticed current refs 5, 7, 14, 15. Please double check ALL your book refs and make sure they give pages numbers.
• Please spell out lesser known abbreviations in the references. I noted CERN, but there may be others.
• As for the pp. 6-39 to 6-40, I'm guessing that the pages are numbered 6-39, 6-40, 6-41...so that would be the correct method of listing the pages. Some scientific/math books number by chapter then page within the chapter.

Otherwise, sources look okay, links checked out with the link checker tool. Ealdgyth - Talk 23:42, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

dragging this back to my concerns Okay, I think something got lost in the shuffle over the page numbers. I did have two concerns that I listed above, but the third comment was merely to point out how some scientific works are paginated. Has anything been done on the two other concerns? Ealdgyth - Talk 14:42, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

Ealdgyth: First, I was wondering if the character used in pp. 6–39 to 6–40 was in fact an en dash (which would be an imprudent choice by the original publishers; might it be a hyphen?). Second, regardless of exactly which character it is, the imperative is to inform our readers accurately. I think my suggestion p. 6–39 to p. 6–40 [sic] achieves this. I still advocate this solution (perhaps without the [sic], in fact).

–_⊥^{¡ɐɔıʇǝo}Noetica!^T– 02:21, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

[Moved from above to here:] Why won't it do as it stands? It is clear and presumably accurate. Some technical books do use this style of page numbering, especially those published by CRC Press. FTI, it is to avoid having to reset every page in the book if material is added or deleted early on for a new edition. I would certainly object to any use of sic: we should not be implying that this is an error, nor hat the source "is destined for trouble". Physchim62 (talk) 10:41, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

For one thing, it won't do as it stands because here at Wikipedia it looks like a mistake. That's how I took it, and I've been around for a while (at WP, and in general). It wasn't clear to me, so it probably will not be clear to others. (This and the next point illustrate something valuable in FAC's exposing specialist articles to review from editors outside the specialty.) Even if that style is familiar to some physicists, it is not familiar to others: and this is a general encyclopedia in which all sorts of technical matters are given exposition in a way that is friendly to non-specialists. For another thing, the present form with to is already a compromise, so the idea of compromising is not itself novel. I simply say it is not the best compromise. Don't include [sic], if that bothers you, though I should point out that it couldn't reasonably be taken to imply an error in the source. The form p. 6–39 to p. 6–40 is harder to misunderstand than what it would replace. Finally, that the source is destined for trouble is borne out by the very wrangle we are currently engaged in! It should have been foreseen that citations nearly always involve an en dash for ranges of pages (or a hyphen, in some practices). It was therefore imprudent to incorporate an en dash as a part of the labelling of every page.

–_⊥^{¡ɐɔıʇǝo}Noetica!^T– 11:50, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

Would notation like the following resolve your concern? "pp. §6-39 to §6-40" —RJH (talk) 19:35, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

No RJH, that would not be appropriate. I have taken the trouble to examine the source itself, and it turns out not to use en dashes as the candidate article suggests it does. Indications on each page use bold, and a shorter hyphen than those in the text: 8-2. Nothing like an en dash. The index shows page numbers like this, with a standard en dash to mark a range:

Ampere's law 6.7, 6.9–6.10

I now suggest that we follow CRC's own practice, which is quite clear:

6.39–6.40

–_⊥^{¡ɐɔıʇǝo}Noetica!^T– 21:33, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

Fixed. Thanks.—RJH (talk) 18:23, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

No, Noetica's critrion is both warped and pernicious. The index of the book uses point separators because it was written (in 1980) with the intention that people would hold the book in their hands and so immediately undertand the significance of the points. I doubt very much that Noetica would have let pass pp. 6.39–6.40 at a first view, because this would "look[ed] like a mistake on Wikipedia" in his/her eyes. I certainly don't grant this editor the sole judgment as to what looks right and what looks wrong on Wikipedia. Nor do I see that the proposed solution would help users to find the reference in the cited work. How is the reader supposed to translate a point into a hyphen? Isn't the current solution les ambiguous for the normal user, even if it isn't an exact transcription of CAS style? What credit should we give to the comments of people who are so obviously more concerned with the pettiest points of style over the general aim of substance and utility? Physchim62 (talk) 23:57, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

• Dabs; please check the disambiguation links identified in the toolbox. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:23, 17 January 2009 (UTC)
  • Checked. Oh, you want me to do something about them? Beh, you've made a tool for that and you can't even be bothered to use it yourselves (let alone read the article, let alone understand it). To anyone who cares about such pettiness, the following links should probably be revised:
    • Induction
    • Monovalent
    • Negative energy
    • Plasma
  • Physchim62 (talk) 01:36, 17 January 2009 (UTC)
    • They have been revised. Thanks.—RJH (talk) 19:28, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

• The only serious issue I can see with this article is with criterion 4. (I'm used to fixing the non-serious issues I see – as I did, rather than just pointing them out.) According to this the article has 46.9 KB of proses, twice the median feature article (23.3 KB according to this). But, given the difficulty of handling this in an article about a topic which is relevant to so many different subjects, I nevertheless support.
• (As for the page numbers, one will figure out what pp. 6-39 to 6-40 (or pp. 6-39 – 6-40) means as soon as they open the book, and if they don't have access to the book they wouldn't give a damn about the page numbers anyway.) -- Army1987 – Deeds, not words. 15:17, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

• Question: Isn't electricity the most obvious use of electrons? Nergaal (talk) 16:51, 17 January 2009 (UTC)
  • What's that question supposed to mean? -- Army1987 – Deeds, not words. 17:24, 17 January 2009 (UTC)
  • Yes, it would seem so. The "Applications" section had a summary that mentioned both the chemical industry and electronics. However, it was removed as a result of earlier comments from this FAC.—RJH (talk) 19:33, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

Comments. I see that there's a circular bing-bang going on about the formatting of pagination et al. in the refs. Why are you using a template? Those things were made for utter newbies who've never dealt with ref lists before. It's less work to do it manually, and you maintain control over it all. My advice is to get rid of the template.

No, my strong preference is to use templates. Manual reference inserts are a nuisance to clean up. Reference templates are much easier to maintain.—RJH (talk) 18:26, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

Can we fix the micro things when they come up, please? Noetica is a notable expert in English-language style who has taught me a great deal. I believe that on his shelves are just about every important style guide for the language, and it shows, I must say. I'm sure he's waiting to proceed to other matters that will improve the article.

It's fixed.—RJH (talk)

While we're on micro stuff (which needs to be got right along with the facts and the macro strategy/tone etc), you may be making errors concerning en dashes and hyphens here (-ly plus hyphen, I noticed). Feel free to run through these exercises to test your knowledge of these important aspects of punctuation.

I think the nomination has good prospects, and I appreciate the expertise of the authors. It is already an important contribution, but let's make the text entirely professional. I'll return soon to review it. In the meantime, it does need copy-editing, so I wonder whether you know how to locate one or two word-nerds who are vaguely in this area. Tony (talk) 10:29, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

A search for ly- in the article produced no result. -- Army1987 – Deeds, not words. 16:40, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

• Coupla things at the top:
  • "... made of ... make up ..."
    • Can't get your point about this. Neutrons and protons make up nuclei; nuclei and electrons make up atoms. That's exactly what the article states. -- Army1987 – Deeds, not words. 15:52, 18 January 2009 (UTC)
  • I think it gets a little too technical in the second para: is there some brilliant way up your sleeve of engaging more with intelligent non-experts in the lead, and pushing down just the most daunting technicalities into the body of the article?
    • Maybe, but I can't find a less technical translation of that. BTW, apart of "identical particles", "generation", "lepton", "weak interactions" and "quantum state", all those words are taught in high schools, and some of them in junior high schools, too. -- Army1987 – Deeds, not words. 15:52, 18 January 2009 (UTC)
    • I actually tried that at one point, but got overridden by the physics experts. I think we can probably safely dump the stuff about the value of the spin and provide an explanation of quantum state. The rest seems relatively benign. Would that be acceptible?—RJH (talk) 18:37, 18 January 2009 (UTC)
  • "The properties of the electron are determined by observing its interaction with other particles." I'm confused: is this Heisenberg thingy, the stuff about "observation changes the observed"? If so, it needs to be better explained, coz I just don't get it as is. If not, please reword.
    • It means "the way you determine the properties of the electron is the observation of its interaction with other particles." Which is true of everything: you can see a chair because it scatters off light from a lamp/the sun into your eyes ("interacts with photons" in fancier terms). While it's true that other particles interact back with the electron or the chair (essentially, Newton's third law; this is neglegible in the case of the chair but not in that of the electron), I think this is irrelevant here. How would you reword that? -- Army1987 – Deeds, not words. 15:52, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

So, be technical further down by all means, but the spin/h such will frighten off most otherwise willing folk. Tony (talk) 10:46, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

Comments by Jakob Scholbach Jakob.scholbach (talk) 17:10, 18 January 2009 (UTC) The article looks fairly reasonable, but, with cursory reading, I do have a number of concerns that should be fixed.

• It is not clear why "The concept of a least possible amount of electrical charge was theorized on several occasions, beginning in 1838 by British natural philosopher Richard Laming;" is mentioned so early or at all. Unless you already know what an electron is and that charges comes in discrete packages, this leads you astray.
  • I guess I'm a little baffled about why you're unclear here. The first sentence defines an electron. The second shows when it became understood that charges come in small packets. How does this lead you astray? Most reviewers seem to like the discovery to be in the first paragraph. That's my preference too. Please clarify.
    • OK, not clear was perhaps the wrong word. Let me put it differently: the lead is not written smoothly, in the sense that things that belong together are not together: the 1st sentence gives a definition of electrons. The 2nd and 3rd give historical information. The 4th gives, again, fundamental physical information. The historical stuff in between hinders a smooth reading of the physical stuff. Jakob.scholbach (talk) 22:21, 18 January 2009 (UTC)
• "Each electron carries a negative elementary charge" is repetetive (with the very first sentence). Also, "Each" sounds a bit awkward, I would omit that.
  • "Elementary charge" is different from "electrical charge".
    • Do you agree that every highlighted word in the following sentences is repetitive?: "Each electron carries a negative elementary charge" and "The electron is an elementary subatomic particle that carries a negative electrical charge" , "Electrons have no known substructure". Jakob.scholbach (talk) 22:28, 18 January 2009 (UTC)
• "proton" and "antiparticle" should be wikilinked.
• The use of references in the lead is inconsistent. I think, either you source every claim, or none. (The latter is OK, since everything you write here should come up in the body, so can be sourced there).
  • The lead follows WP:CITELEAD. I didn't write the policy, I just follow it.—RJH (talk)\
    • Well, I think, you don't follow it. It says "editors should balance the desire to avoid redundant citations in the lead with the desire to aid readers in locating sources for challengeable material". The fact that Stoney introduced the name electron is not terribly challengeable, I feel. Jakob.scholbach (talk) 22:21, 18 January 2009 (UTC)
• Etymology section
  • It's a bit awkward to start with that, I feel. Also the section is really short. Perhaps merge that into the history section?
    • The etymologists seem to like to have the definition there. It seems fine to me.—RJH (talk)
  • "which in turn came" should be "comes"
    • I used "came" to preserve tense.
      • Hm. Now it reads "Both electric and electricity are derived from the Latin ēlectrum, which came from the Greek word ēlektron (ήλεκτρον) for amber." -- I still don't see the reason for past tense. An etymological derivation is something that is valid today, I think. (Not that this is terribly important...) Jakob.scholbach (talk) 22:21, 18 January 2009 (UTC)
  • "with the latter now used to designate a subatomic particle, such as a proton or neutron" I doubt that. "-on" is simply the ancient Greek ending of words with neutral gender.
    • It is cited.—RJH (talk)
      • OK. Jakob.scholbach (talk) 22:21, 18 January 2009 (UTC)
• History
  • Is there no better illustration of the Crookes' experiment? The image just shows that the rays can be shielded, but not the deflection.
    • It's in the infobox. The illustration demonstrates the current flow.—RJH (talk)
      • The text says "Furthermore, by applying a magnetic field, he was able to deflect the rays" -- I thought an illustration of this would be good. (AFAIK the shielding depicted in the current picture is less informative than the bending of the rays, right?) Jakob.scholbach (talk) 22:21, 18 January 2009 (UTC)
  • "However, oil drops, ..." has a comma too much.
    • Fixed.—RJH (talk)
• In general, the wording is occasionally not so good. I'm not a native speaker, but it seems odd to me that you put "the"'s very often, e.g. "During the period 1838–51, the British natural philosopher" or "in 1874, the Irish physicist". Another example of awkward wording: "A body has an electric charge when that ...".
  • I made a few tweaks.—RJH (talk)
    • Keep going! "Based upon his work, in 1930 Paul Dirac" sounds awkward. I'm sure I could spot another dozen or so ... Perhaps you ask some copyeditor with a fresh mind to scan the article? Jakob.scholbach (talk) 22:21, 18 January 2009 (UTC)
• Formation section
  • "The big bang theory is the accepted scientific theory to explain the early stages in the evolution of the Universe." you have to provide a reference for that claim.
    • Silk (2008).—RJH (talk) 20:05, 18 January 2009 (UTC)
      • Well, I'm talking about a precise reference of that particular claim. You ought to give the reference of the page where it is written. Jakob.scholbach (talk) 22:21, 18 January 2009 (UTC)
• Applications: this looks a bit unstructured, for example, the electron microscopes appear both in Industry and Laboratory, but it's not clear why. I would do a separate section for electron microscopes. I feel that the applications in general are underrepresented, for example compared to the lenghty history section.
  • I deleted the electron microscope entry in industry. The sectioning complies with WP:Layout. What would you add that is specifically related to applications of only electrons, as opposed to atoms? (The latter would cover virtually every application.)—RJH (talk) 20:39, 18 January 2009 (UTC)
    • I'm not a connoisseur of these matters, but I think you should sketch how an electron microscope or the surface imaging techniques work. Also, are LEED and RHEED primarily industry-used techniques? It looks like they belong to laboratory. But actually I think the applications section might benefit from a restructuring: ordering the applications by the specific feature of electrons they use could make it all more coherent. Jakob.scholbach (talk) 22:21, 18 January 2009 (UTC)
      • Possibly. I'm going to let these article comments alone for a while and then come back to them when I have a calmer perspective and more free time. Thank you for your observations.—RJH (talk) 19:36, 19 January 2009 (UTC)
• Notes section: you might want to use two columns for that.
  • Actually I dislike two columns because the formulae (or some cite fields) tend to overlap the other column.—RJH (talk)
• External links: I think they should only be included if they offer something the article does not have: according to that the Weissstein link should go, the PDG one is also not quite clear to me. The last external link lacks an accessdate. Jakob.scholbach (talk) 17:10, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

As for "-on", that part of that sentence is clearly about modern English, what it means in ancient Greek is irrelevant. The rest of your points sound valid. -- Army1987 – Deeds, not words. 18:00, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

Well, I doubt that "electron" (in English) derives from "electric" + "-on", rather I think, "electron" (Eng) derives from "elektron" (Greek), but I'm not an etymologist, so I give you the benefit of the doubt. Jakob.scholbach (talk) 18:49, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

Sorry but I'm going to have to go with the sources.—RJH (talk) 20:04, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

OK, that's no big deal. Jakob.scholbach (talk) 22:21, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

We can't ask Stoney what his intent was, but I think it is not perceived like that. For example, the plural is "electrons" not "electra" (compare with "phenomena", "automata", "criteria", etc.). Also, that suffix is now used in names which have nothing to do with Greek, e.g. "boson", "fermion", "gluon", etc. -- Army1987 – Deeds, not words. 12:53, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

• After a second reading of the lead section, I think that the lead has to be rewritten completely. Before that's done (and the above points are covered), I oppose this article being featured. The lead contains quite an amount of technical terms. I don't assume they can (or should) be completely avoided, but more of an effort should be made toward that direction. For example "The electron is an elementary subatomic particle". The reader will wonder: What does elementary mean? You give the answer a bit later ("Electrons have no known substructure"). Another example: "Interaction among the electrons of two or more atoms is the main cause of chemical bonding. " somehow belongs to "The attractive Coulomb force between an electron and a proton is what causes electrons to be bound into atoms." Finally the formation aspects and applications are not at all mentioned in the lead! My rule of thumb: every longer subsection should be represented by about one sentence. Vice versa, every sentence of the lead should condense a considerable amount of information, or else be a very important single fact. "The mass of an electron is approximately 1⁄1836 of a proton." does not satisfy, IMO, either of the two. Jakob.scholbach (talk) 18:54, 18 January 2009 (UTC)
  • To me the primary issue with the technical terms is due to the sentences on spin and the quantum state. I'll see if I can simplify a little.

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