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This page contains archive discussion about the wikipedia:WikiProject Chemicals for 2005

Contributions

I would like to participate in this work. I am a chemistry professor working in the US. My area of speciality is in organic chemistry, though I also use a lot of inorganics, particularly lanthanides, in my research. I recently began making contributions to Wikipedia, for example cerium(III) chloride.

I would suggest that we look at developing a standard format for pages on chemical compounds (the chemical elements already look very nice!). This may need some variation- for example something common like methanol has data such as triple point, whereas something more complex like morphine will not. In addition, I would suggest that we have one format for inorganic compounds and another for organics.

I would also suggest that we tighten up on naming. I have noticed that for inorganics some metal compounds are named like copper(II) chloride (this follows the IUPAC and ACS rules), while others are named like copper (II) chloride (with a space after the metal- this is not an official naming convention as far as I know). I think we should standardise all names to the IUPAC/ACS system, which is what I understand Wikipedia is aiming to do.

I want to get the discussion started and get people's thoughts on what should be done. Also, could someone tell me how I can sign up as a participant- as a newbie, am I eligible to do this? I refrained from editing the page to do this, because of the warning at the top of the page!

Thanks, Martin A. Walker Walkerma

I tend to enjoy working on articles about rather obscure things, and a lot of chemical compounds fall into this category. However, for many of these compounds, I don't have access to a lot of information. I would be willing to contribute a bit here and a bit there, adding the information I have available, but I won't necessarily be able to provide full coverage on a lot of these compounds.

I added an infobox for acenaphthylene, but it's mostly question marks at this point. Are there any comments or suggestions before I do this kind of thing for more compounds? —Bkell 06:37, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Request

Hi, here are some requests for your project (i'm not a chemist, or would offer to contribute)

IUPAC/ACS system, a simple naming tutorial for us mere mortals
polymer acroynm naming systm, is there such a thing? (see Fluoropolymer Thermoplastic)

Duk 19:14, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for the input- we must address this when we choose a template. There are already a couple of pages on naming. The inorganic naming still needs some work, though there is one page that is a good start- see Systematic name. There is an excellent page for organic compounds naming at IUPAC nomenclature which is a fabulous resource for those learning organic chemistry- even "mere mortals". What seems to be really lacking is good linking to these pages- so we need to ensure that any templates we use include links on this. After only two months on Wikipedia, I've seen this problem already, see Talk:Silver(I) fluoride.

As for polymers, that is another whole field, one which I know very little about- I only know the common acronyms. Since polymers are commercially VERY important, we need to have something on this. We do have Category:Organic polymers, and a few acronyms show up there and on List of compounds (look under the "P"s particularly). I may start something off on acronyms, but it'll be pretty basic! Walkerma 22:29, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)

IUPAC names for inorganics

There seems to be total confusion out there on how to name inorganic compounds! To help resolve this I went rummaging in my basement and dug out the relevant journal (JACS, 82, 5525 (1960)), the most relevant pages are now scanned in at http://www2.potsdam.edu/walkerma/inorg_naming.pdf This is the original set of rules, I am ordering a book on the latest revisions, but my understanding is that these rules are by-and-large still current. When there are variable or non-obvious oxidation states, the basics are:

Metal compounds are named using the Stock system. The article indicates that Greek prefixes are also possible, but that approach is considered obsolete (read any introductory chemistry textbook to see this). The preferred (Stock) involves using Roman numerals in parentheses IMMEDIATELY AFTER the element name to indicate oxidation number. Example from the article: FeCl₂ iron(II) chloride
Nonmetal compounds are to be named using Greek numerical prefixes. The prefix mono may generally be omitted. Example from the article: NO₂ nitrogen dioxide.

I will try to work on correcting material on naming already on Wikipedia, since this will become a primary reference for us.

I would like to propose that one of our first tasks should be to get all existing compounds pages to conform to the above rules. Any comments? Walkerma 22:45, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Navigational aids for chemical compounds

I think alphabetical listings are not always the best way to classify chemical compounds. For example, what if you want to find out all of the compounds of aluminium that have pages? Or if you want to know what pages there are for organics containing four carbons, or of formula C₄H₁₀O? To begin addressing this I have begun writing a page Inorganic compounds by element which deals with the first problem. I thought long and hard, and researched some chem catalogues to try and pick out what I believe to be a pretty complete list of IMPORTANT compounds of those elements. I have tabulated them and used formulae, in order to keep it extremely concise. In my opinion, one problem with List of compounds is that it is full of obscure compounds that no one is ever going to write a page on. Another problem with list of compounds is that it only has one compound per line, so you have to scroll down a lot to find things.

Another nice thing about Inorganic compounds by element is that we can give a direct link from (for example) the aluminium page to Inorganic_compounds_by_element#Aluminium, this would be very useful.

I think we should also have an organics page listed by chemical formula (Hill formula order- C, then H, then others alphabetically) which would address the organics queries mentioned. Comments, anyone? Walkerma 19:38, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Lists on /organization page

These lists are coming along nicely and should be pretty much ready soon. My view is that

We shouldn't write in "wish lists" of compounds without pages, beyond the number needed to meet the goal. However it is OK to put (for example) two compounds for an element in the inorganics list, if both articles are complete or close to complete.
We should not put minerals or mixtures in. These rarely have much chemical information beyond a basic formula or two. These were a headache when I was going through List of compounds.
We need to have some indicator as to whether the linked page meets our goal or not. As for myself, I have done this rather crudely by adding comments after incomplete entries, such as (Needs table + content). Perhaps we could put links in bold for articles that we consider "complete"?
In order to fill out some lists where we clearly have blank spaces, I have put suggestions in plain text (except in the case of the inorganics, where the elements are fixed!). If you come up with better suggestions, or you find near-complete pages that I or others missed, put these in instead.
Once the lists are done- who is going to actually write the missing pages or upgrade the poor ones?! We'll have to come up with a monthly action list, with participants agreeing what they would like to work on.

Please comment or add your suggestions. Walkerma 07:56, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Perhaps we should indicated per section what the specific requirement for the articles are, e.g., which infobox to use, and which things are minimal (references?). And are the infoboxes final enough to be ready for real use? I have a question open there about linking back to the chem infobox wikipage. Wim van Dorst 20:52, 2005 Apr 13 (UTC).

Methylsulfonylmethane

This article REALLY bothers me on so many levels. Not only should it be named "Dimethyl sulfone", but most of the info in it is quackery. I would like to edit this article, adding more chemistry information. However, I feel I may be entering a battlezone. Can you give me advice as to how I (or we) should proceed? ~K 03:45, 1 May 2005 (UTC)

Phosphorus chlorides

I started an article called Phosphorus chlorides. Phosphorus trichloride, phosphorus pentachloride, and diphosphorus tetrachloride are 3 chlorides mentioned in there. I inserted references to these in Chloride, Hydrogen chloride, and in Acyl chlorides in a new preparation section. Also the Benzoyl chloride stub mentions PCl₅. The article has been expanded slightly and molecular images were added. Since then User:Walkerma has written articles on Phosphorus trichloride and Phosphorus trifluoride, in addition to the previous article on Phosphorus tribromide. It is not clear what will be done about the other phosphorus chlorides.
H Padleckas 16:20, 18 Apr - 2 May 2005 (UTC)

Article considered for deletion

I noticed this amino acid article listed on Wikipedia:Votes for deletion: 3,4-Methano-1,2,3,4-tetrahydroisoquinoline-3-carboxylic acid. If you know anything

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