User:Lucretius

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[edit] Some personal stuff

I'm a primary (elementary) school teacher. My main academic interests are literature (English and classical)and philosophy, the metaphysical side of which has led me to develop a recent interest in modern physics.

My main contribution to Wikipedia, as I see it, will be to remove from the 'article' pages anything that clutters them with unmeaningful observations or which amounts to an expression of personal opinion. I believe some contributors are spreading themselves too thinly, meaning they are involved in too many topics and do not give enough time and thought to the contributions they do make. I believe the readers deserve more respect than that. I think also that better use could be made of 'Discussion' pages -major revisions to an article should be justified in the Discussions page. Instead some contributors provide little or no explanation for significant decisions. I believe other contributors deserve better than that.

I don't yet know how active I'll be at Wikipedia (31/12/05). I'll concentrate on a few pages and maybe spread out from there.

Definitions of a humbling experience:

a) a visit to the 'Recent changes' page followed a few seconds later by another visit to the 'Recent changes' page. It's a whole new page every time!

b) a visit to any of the user pages of the hundreds of polymath geniuses who haunt Wikipedia.

c) a visit to foreign language versions of articles you have worked on - either your work has not yet been translated or it has got lost in translation or worse still it has been mistranslated.

[edit] Articles I have worked on

(see also the relevant discussion pages if you don't have a life of your own, as I am sure there are better things you can do):

George Stoney - I added the section 'Stoney Scale'

Planck units - I removed 5 equations and I have debated in vain with User:Rbj about the section on invariant scaling

Fine-structure constant - I added the caveat in italics in the 'Numerological explanations' section and I have debated in vain with Rbj and User:Melchoir about the appropriateness of the term 'numerological' in a scientific context

Numerology - I rewrote the section 'Numerology in science' after debating in vain with Melchoir about the appropriateness of this article (I wanted it removed but compromised to secure what I think is a more objective treatment of the argument - see also my user page for debate with Melchoir)

Planck force - I considerably expanded what was a very brief and inadequate definition. Rbj gave me some useful criticism. I subsequently revised a formula in the Italian version. My Italian is bad but the formula was wrong in any language.

Gravitational constant - I worked with Rbj to secure a more meaningful expression of the weakness of gravity, particularly in the context of conventional and natural units. I also added a section on the dimensions of G, relating these to Planck units.

Jeans Length - I added a simple introduction to this article because otherwise it was intelligible only to highbrows.

Gravitational waves - I have been working with MOBle to restructure and rewrite the article (I have been playing Doctor Watson to his Sherlock Holmes so that people even less informed than I can understand the intricacies of the argument).