Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Amount of substance

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result of the debate was keep. Physchim62 (talk·RfA) 20:52, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Amount of substance

This article's reason for existence appears to be to resolve the confusion created by defining the chemical term mole (unit) as the arbitrary "amount of substance" rather than a defined number of particles (Avogadro's number). I have clarified the explanation in the mole article and see no reason anymore for the existence of this one. However, if it is still deemed useful by others, the article title should be a redirect to Avogadro's number. Blainster 17:21, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

• Delete per nomination. - Blainster 17:26, 24 October 2005 (UTC)
  • changed to Redirect after reading society publication links provided by Gene Nygard. --Blainster 20:33, 24 October 2005 (UTC)
• Keep. The keepers of our standards insist on making a distinction. This is made clear in both BIPM's SI brochure [1] and in NIST's Guide for the Use of the Internaiotnal System of Units (SI)[2]. Gene Nygaard 19:30, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

• Make that a very strong keep, once I find out that after all Blainster's blather above about how "I have clarified the explanation" I go to the Avogadro's number article and the phrase "amount of substance" is curiously completely absent from that page, nowhere to be found at all. To compound the problem even more, after Blainster's last edit to the mole (unit) page, the only mention of "amount of substance" in that article was in the quoted CGPM definition, plus the category link at the bottom of the page. Not a whole lot of discussion about it there, either, obviously. Note that the metrologists use substance as a mass noun in this context; Blainster's uses it with definite or indefinite articles, treating it differently linguistically. Gene Nygaard 19:58, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

Thank you for your gracious contribution, Gene. I have not touched the Avogadro's number article, which competently describes the subject by explaining that it is a quantity. Therefore it need not use the ambiguous term amount, although you are certainly free to add it if you wish. --Blainster 20:33, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

• Keep, as per Gene. I don't think a straight redirect to Avogadro's number is useful, since this does not make the distinction between a unit and the quantity it measures. --Bob Mellish 18:58, 25 October 2005 (UTC)
• Keep. Wow, those links surprised me. It's a silly term, but it's real. The article should have a couple of links to avoid (completely understandable) AfD's like this in the future. -- SCZenz 02:41, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.