Template talk:Thermodynamic potentials

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[edit] New template

I reverted because it doesn't have the same style as the others in the series. Check out {{Template:Thermodynamic equations}} and all the sub-templates that it links to.

What was wrong with this one, you said it doesn't work so good? PAR 14:49, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Well, i tried to even the columns out, but it didnt work without the thing being too big. The equations look crammed on there, as opposed to nice and neat. Perhaps we should have a look and re-design the other templates with the help of some of the less-scientifically and more-arty people? Then the chemistry articles can have a template even sexier than this one:

Thermodynamic equations
Internal Energy	U(S,V)
Helmholtz free energy	A(T,V) = U − TS
Enthalpy	H(S,P) = U + PV
Gibbs free energy	G(T,P) = U + PV − TS

J O R D A N ^[talk] 14:57, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

"arty" people's brains work differently than "science" people's brains. The people who are reading these articles are mostly science people. The template should be built for their brains, not arty peoples brains. The purpose of the template is to organize the concepts and provide links to the concepts. To science people, the beauty is in the organization and concise summary of information. If you look at the template, and you want to mentally flip through the potentials your eye doesn't have to zig-zag down the page, it just jumps down, down, and down. Same with the equations. They are aligned so that the mathematical differences between them are obvious, and to see it your eye just jumps down, down, and down. I agree when you step back, blur your eyes and take in the template as a whole, it not very symmetrical and artistically pleasing. But if science people look at the template and have to squint their eyes and zig-zag around and mentally remove the beautiful artwork in order to get at the information, then the template is bad. Even if an arty person looks at it and says its a thing of beauty, its still bad. If you can make it look better without detracting from its main purpose, then fine.

Here is a way for you to play with templates without altering articles. Begin a new page called "User:JCraw/TestTemplate" and then put the template you are playing with in there. Then, on some other page, like WP:SB (the sandbox) or maybe your user page, or start another page called "User:JCraw/Test" and put in the template call {{User:JCraw/TestTemplate}} there in order to look at it. PAR 16:53, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

With all respect, i disagree; as a man of science myself, i find aestheticism a key part in the understanding of information. If the infobox was more symmetrical and aligned, it makes the differences more clear due to the continuity of the images and their alignment. The previous template made this difficult to accomplish, and therefore by default, the current one is better. I think there can be some convergance between aesthetically pleasing things and correlatory things; they go hand in hand if used in equal measure. James S 00:00, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

Created one for the formulae. Hope it's okay. James S 18:12, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

Still too large! We should try to not make them any larger. Also, this template should be labelled "Thermodynamic potentials" not "Thermodynamic equations", and I don't think we need the square root of x logo. That should be reserved for math-only pages, not physics pages. PAR 20:57, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

I'm fully aware of what it is.. i just modified the one that you made, and added it into the page i used for the old one.. didnt want to make another sub page. I'm not really that good at HTML or that stuff, i'm more of a C++/C person. If there's anyone who might be able to make it look inline and smaller, it'd be nice. As for the square root of x.. it was the only thing which resembled formulae ... :-/ James S 22:28, 29 November 2006 (UTC)