Talk:Colloidal gold

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[edit] Units

There seems to be a mini edit-war breaking out over the use of micron versus micrometre and M versus mol. Am I right in thinking that the latter in each case is technically more correct that the former? Specifically, micron is an old and deprecated (although common) alternative for micrometre, and M actually refers to the molarity of a solution rather than one mole. -- ALoan (Talk) 11:09, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Re: Units

M vs. mol - good point, my bad. I'm a physicist, not chemist, so sometimes make stupid mistakes like that.

micron vs. micrometer - technically, the latter is correct, but the former is easier to write and means exactly the same thing: μm = 1/1 000 000 of a meter.

Well, I am an astronomer - fortnuately, someone who knowns some chemistry wrote articles about moles and molarity.

OK - so mol is right, yes? I can't get excited about the difference between micron and micrometre, but we don't need a host of reverts - what is the consensus?

And I think you'll find it is µm (µm) not μm (μm) :) -- ALoan (Talk) 15:15, 12 Aug 2004 (UTC)

The Wikipedia article for mole provides useful input for this debate. As does the official SI definition and symbol for mole.

The SI website also says that the term micron was officially dropped in 1968. Current use might be characterised as 'colloquial' as with the officially obsolete term Centigrade. The term 'micron' is typically seen in particular domains and regions, but is not universal in either. The SI format [prefix]+[unit name] indicates the size and the measure as in microgram, microvolt, microwatt, microfarad. The format also applies in symbols. The constant repetition of this consistent format is useful for transfer of knowledge when encountering terms that may be unfamiliar such as femtometre, kilocoulomb or GJ.

The micron does not fit into this format. It requires unique knowledge of size and what it is measuring. Many online references to micron often provide a definition in the text because of this problem. The US NIST and the IAU say micron is non-preferred.

I know that a lot of people still use it, just as a lot of people still use Centigrade. So we can't stop such terms cropping up in original material or in quotes. Wikipedia links to micron simply redirect to the micrometre article. At the very least, such redirect should be avoided. I made the original correction but had forgotten about it. I merely happened to come across the term on that page again. The history of edit summaries indicated something other than reversion, so I assumed it had appeared in added text. I did not check the details of each edit until you guys started discussing it. It is a small surprise to learn that it was a reversion rather than new text but it isn't a big deal.

I hope that is useful context

Bobblewik 19:42, 12 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for your clarification - I had assumed it was reversion as the terms swapped back and forth a couple of times, but I'm glad we have (I think; I hope) resolved the issue. -- ALoan (Talk) 19:51, 12 Aug 2004 (UTC)

[edit] External links

I removed the entire section of external links (two of them) here [1] - they don't seem to fit into the theme of the artice content as it exists at the moment. Thoughts? What would be really nice would be an external link to polymerization reactions conducted on colloidal gold particles. I'll see if I can find something like that. --HappyCamper 17:47, 25 May 2006 (UTC)