Wikipedia talk:Chemical infobox/archive01

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Archive This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

This is the archive01 page of the Chemical infobox discussion. Please continue the discussion there if you want to. Wim van Dorst 20:49, 2005 Apr 16 (UTC).

Contents

Various includes/excludes to the tables

The Thermochemistry values and symbols need to be explained somewhere. AxelBoldt 18:53 Jan 28, 2003 (UTC)

I've added links to standard enthalpy change of formation and created and linked to a new page standard molar entropy. Good enough? --- Tim Starling 04:12 Jan 30, 2003 (UTC)

It would be nice if a space for association or dissociation constants (in water) could be made. I may not give a darn about the enthalpy of formation of an organic acid, but if it had 2 carboxylate groups I might want to know the Kd of both. Dwmyers 15:30 Mar 3, 2003 (UTC)

I thought from the start that organic compounds would require a different set of properties to inorganic ones – hence the title of this page. If you want to make tables for the organic compounds, I can give you the excel spreadsheet I used to generate the current tables. It's pretty handy: it has a macro which processes a wiki text file and replaces certain tags with values from the spreadsheet, then dumps the text to the clipboard. I had been meaning to put it up on the web somewhere, but hadn't gotten around to it.
For the moment, though, you might want to consider adding a table to the dissociation constant article – like what I did with band gap. I don't really know much about organic chem – the last time I studied it was in high school -- Tim Starling 00:44 Mar 4, 2003 (UTC)

Short form of page for less common inorganics

I have put up a short version of an inorganic compound page, called inorganic_stylesheet1 since I note that the current template is rather intimidating. I am concerned that most people writing new pages are not going to want to spend the time to look up all of the data asked for, and I personally don't like putting up a page where most of the entries have a "?". This could get even worse if we include all of the details that a "full" page should include (see my comments in the next talk section on suggestions for the template). I have put up a sample page at samarium(III) chloride so you can see what a typical page might look like. I have put some more extended comments up at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Chemicals#.22Short_form.22_standard_for_less_common_inorganics

Please give me your comments on inorganic_stylesheet1, either here or at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Chemicals#.22Short_form.22_standard_for_less_common_inorganics- thanks!

If people like this, I will produce one for organics too. Walkerma 19:46, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)

After several minor changes to inorganic_stylesheet1, this seems to be a good format for inorganics. It is not quite as short as simple organic template, so I have used the word "short" instead of simple. I have now uploaded the template, but the main page for Chemical infobox is getting rather cluttered- feel free to reorganise this. I will upload a list of pages using the new short form (about 20 so far) when I get time. By the way Cacycle, I love the new simple organic template, we really needed this. Thanks! Walkerma 17:58, 31 Jan 2005 (UTC)

See discussion on Walkerma's page .Walkerma 16:50, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Chemical Infobox

I just discovered another "sister" project, compiling DATA on chemical compounds over at Wikipedia_talk:Chemical_infobox. We should keep an eye on things happening over there. Walkerma

From the various talk pages

I have reorganized the current template, you can see the new version below. I will use this new template on hydrochloric acid for a real-life example. The only row I have removed (as far as I remember) was the "pH of 10% solution". If you have suggestions please post them here. 19:24, 14 Mar 2005 Cacycle

Being familiar with the result on the hydrochloric acid, I would like the standar chembox to have a link back to the template:chembox page, where we can provide the disclaimer and other legalese. Additionally, this will provide us a means of automatic counting the use of this template.
ps. If the table below is the same as on the template page, I think it can be deleted here on this discussion page. Wim van Dorst 16:16, 2005 Apr 10 (UTC).

I removed the (double) template here, and --unanswered-- will take initiative for the chembox. Be Bold they say. Wim van Dorst 21:59, 2005 Apr 15 (UTC).

Hazardous Chemical Database

The problem I see with using this is that the pages doesn't seem to stay for very long at the same spot. Right now I wanted to look at sulfuric acid and went to http://ull.chemistry.uakron.edu/erd/chemicals/8/7116.html, given in the article, but the link was broken. That has happened a lot recently. What made it worse is that the search function there gave neither sulfuric acid nor sulphuric acid. So, is there anyone who knows any more reliable sources than HCD? Mikez 21:05, 13 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Correction - this time the search yielded http://ull.chemistry.uakron.edu/erd/chemicals1/8/7109.html for sulfuric acid /Mikez
Unfortunately the HCD people have rebuilt their database since I initially gathered the links, and most of the internal IDs have changed. Thus, the large majority of safety information links are currently broken. The data is still in there, someone just needs to find it again using their awful search engine, and fix all the links. -- Tim Starling 16:59, Apr 16, 2004 (UTC)

Why are "Standard Enthalpy of Combustion" and "Standard molar Gibbs free energy change of formation" not on the table? --OldakQuill 17:11, 29 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Because most inorganic compounds don't combust, and the Gibbs free energy can be calculated from the entropy and enthalpy, which are already given, using the formula:
ΔG = ΔH - TΔS
If you need to know the energy of combustion or oxidation of an inorganic compound, form a balanced equation of reactants (the compound with oxygen) and products, then find the total formation enthalpy of the products and reactants. The heat of combustion is the difference of the two. -- Tim Starling 00:31, Apr 30, 2004 (UTC)

Table frmt

Could the following be wrapped / implemented?

<table border="0" align="right" style="margin-left:1em"> <tr> <td> Existing table code </td> </tr> </table>

I think the important part is style="margin-left:1em" ... so as the text doesn't "rub up" against the tables? It does in mozilla ... thnks, reddi

  • This has been dealt with a long time ago. Wim van Dorst 21:08, 2005 Apr 16 (UTC).

Infoboxes (discussion moved from Chemistry Wikiproject)

There are a few pages I've made/heavily edited that link to organic table information that use tables inspired by the inorganic table information template. In making these, however, I came to realized that the appropriate information for any given compound varies rather heavily from compound to compound, and so the "definitive" organic table never came to pass. This is better shown by looking at a few of the pages and their tables, such as furfural, citric acid, and butadiene. Shimmin

I had created organic table information before I found this comment, but no regrets - it ought to exist if it's linked. I have raised it to a superset of the sold, liquid, gas, acid/base and hazardous type info. --Keith Edkins 21:54, 4 Jun 2004 (UTC)
I've made a template for the infobox. You can use {{subst:chembox}} to add it to articles. I merged the inorganic compound and organic compound tables into it; I think it covers everything one might be interested in. A few fields (such as the IUPAC name) might not be needed for inorganic compounds, but everything else should probably remain the same between the two. --Eequor 20:45, 15 Aug 2004 (UTC)

{{Chembox simple organic}} {{substemplate|chembox_simple_organic}}

This is a new template for a chembox that is in use for medium-sized organic compounds. For a list of the about 80 articles that already use this box see Wikipedia:Chemical infobox. Cacycle 16:44, 30 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Shall we move these discussion texts to the talk page of the Chemical infobox?. Wim van Dorst 07:54, 2005 Apr 11 (UTC).

Question about which box to use

There are two types of info boxes which I'll call "orange" and "new" (since I think it's newer--the info box currently shown on the project page.) I actually prefer the orange box style, and plan on making articles with that. Is there a problem with this? Can we even adopt that as the official standard? For one thing, the new box shows up poorly on some browsers (with black backgrounds in some cells), and I think color makes these articles look better. Cool Hand Luke 23:57, 24 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I've notice several different schemes on various articles, so I don't know exactly what new box you're talking about. I prefer and use the two-tone color scheme of the present infobox. - Centrx 20:25, 26 Sep 2004 (UTC)
I'm now at home on a mozilla browser and I can now tell the new one is still orange (now two-tone). On certain versions of IE, the current style looks awful: the backgrounds appear black. I'll try to tweak the template the make this problem go away. Otherwise, I do like the new style better. Cool Hand Luke 20:37, 26 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Is it possible this is because of some articles using colors like #FAD or #FED instead of #FFAADD or #FFEEDD ? - Centrx 20:22, 27 Sep 2004 (UTC)
More than possible. I fixed the template. If I happened to edit articles using just three bytes, I'll fix them too, but I'm not going out of my way to do it. Cool Hand Luke 00:48, 28 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Disclaimer and References links

Hi, guys, I added a Disclaimer and References link to all three infoboxes, linking back to the Chemicals infobox page. This was in old version of the infobox, and I liked it. Wim van Dorst 22:38, 2005 Apr 15 (UTC).

How To Use Infoboxes

Hello WikiChemists! Very basic question: How does one use these info boxes? I paste the text {{Chembox simple organic}} into the article, but am unable to edit the entries. So, I figure I'm doing something wrong. (See Lithium aluminium hydride as an example of my attempt to add an infobox.) ~K 22:15, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)

  • Edit the chemistry article to add the infobox to
  • Type the text {{subst:chembox}} on the top line
  • Save the page. Now that typed text is substituted by the actual infobox code
  • Edit the article again, and now the infobox is available for editing

We should consider this a FAQ and display this usage-tip somewhere. Í'll try to find a proper place somewhere. Wim van Dorst 12:27, 2005 May 2 (UTC). I put it up on the wikipedia:Chemical infobox page itself. Wim van Dorst 08:57, 2005 May 5 (UTC).

Limonene template problem

User:Malcolm Farmer notes problems with using the infobox, if you look under the history of the new (and much-needed) Limonene page. If you look at the older versions of the page, you will see. Maybe we need to explain how to use these templates, because I confess I haven't worked it out properly myself, and I even wrote one! Myself, I just keep versions of each template in MS Word, and I edit them as I need to. How do others do this?

Hi Martin, the trick is to open the page where you want the table for editing, type {{subst:chembox}}, and then save the page. Upon saving the actual template table is inserted into the page. So opening the page again for editing: Presto, the full table is there! PS. Good progress you, Henry and the others are making. Wim van Dorst 20:57, 2005 Apr 23 (UTC).
I just inserted the chembox, added some details, and edited the text a bit. It does need quite some work, though. Wim van Dorst 22:22, 2005 Apr 23 (UTC).


FYI, I added a new Category:Terpenes and terpenoids, I didn't like them all going into organic compounds, and User:V8rik has been very busy creating Ionone, Citral, etc. Walkerma 16:57, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Thanks a lot for the explanation. With writing most of my material offline, I'd missed this, I feel so stupid! But probably a lot of newbies have the same problem, only they're afraid to ask. Walkerma 15:55, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Suggestions for the template

I have a few thoughts on editing the template, but I don't want to upset people by editing first and asking questions later. Also see my comments in the previous section on a short form.

1. A lot of thermodynamic properties are included, yet many other things are not. Is this by choice, or is it just an accident of evolution? I would definitely like to include coordination geometry for metal compounds, and possibly include a section on hydrates too. I think there should also be a link to related compounds, as they do with chemical elements- thus the page on NaCl would link to NaF, NaBr, NaI, LiCl and KCl. There are quite a few other pieces of data omitted from the template, such as dielectric constant, molar conductivity, dipole moment, viscosity, vapour pressure at STP or SATP, refractive index, lambda-max and extinction coefficient, major IR bands, 1H-NMR and 13C-NMR chemical shifts (for organics), mass spectrum information, magnetic susceptibility, magnetic moment (where appropriate), symmetry point group, basic chemical properties (besides the acidity currently included)- and these are just a few things that spring to mind! The NMR, IR and possibly MS could be links to scans of the spectra. Many of these are properties I would consider to be more important than those currently in the template- but if we put EVERYTHING in, it may be quite overwhelming- so do we need to limit what is included? If so, what goes in and what stays out?

2. Isn't specific gravity rather redundant when density is included?

3. Don't the Safety and Precautions sections really belong in an MSDS rather than here? We include a link to an MSDS in the template box, so anyone wanting serious safety information will look there (or at an external link if provided). It seems silly to clutter up much of this box with a repetition of the MSDS information. The purpose of a page on a chemical compound is to provide a summary of properties, uses, etc. of that compound, it should not try to be a watered-down MSDS. I would suggest a simple summary term like "Hazards"- and then put in simple words such as Irritant, Carcinogen, Toxic, along the lines of the Aldrich catalogue. If someone wants the full MSDS sheet they click on the link.

4. Should things like density and phase be given for STP, or should we use SATP? I think of benzene as a liquid, not a solid! I think many density values are given at temperatures other than 0 °C. Also, shouldn't the default for temperature be °C rather than K? Other than NIST, I don't know of any chemists who routinely use anything other than °C to report the majority of their information on chemical compounds- but then I am an organic chemist rather than a physical chemist!

Walkerma 20:15, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I raised some of these questions some time ago, when I was quite new to Wikipedia. I still think most of the above comments apply. Now we have more chemists active on Wikipedia, it may be time to revamp the main template- which I suspect had a lot of input from non-chemists, so it comes across to me as unusually skewed towards certain data. Can I solicit comments here? Once we have resolved the List of compounds split I would like to start wholesale editing of this main compound template. Walkerma 22:11, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)

"Short form" standard for less common inorganics

Looking at the template that we are currently developing/using- Wikipedia:Chemical_infobox

I am concerned that it may be far too detailed for less common materials. For example, it may be perfect for methanol or sodium chloride, but the types of thing I have been submitting (such as cerium(III) chloride) frequently do not have detailed thermodynamic properties available- and even if such data are available, I may want to get a page up in a reasonable amount of time which is not filled with question marks. Bearing in mind that even some quite simple compounds such as calcium chloride do not currently have basic information, I think it would be better to get a large number of compounds entered in with reasonable pages, rather than having only a couple of dozen compounds covered in excruciating detail.

Another point on this- there are still many details omitted from the Wikipedia:Chemical_infobox template, such as dielectric constant, molar conductivity, dipole moment, viscosity, vapour pressure at STP or NTP, refractive index, lambda-max and extinction coefficient, major IR bands, 1H-NMR and 13C-NMR chemical shifts (for organics), magnetic susceptibility, magnetic moment (where appropriate), symmetry point group, basic chemical properties (besides the acidity currently included)- and these are just a few things that spring to mind! Many of these are properties I would consider to be more important than those currently in the template- but if we put EVERYTHING in, it may be quite overwhelming!

I have also added a couple of extra comments on this at Wikipedia_talk:Chemical_infobox.

I would also like to suggest that we have some suggested section headings, such as "Chemical properties," "Uses," etc.

To that end, I have taken the liberty of putting up a short form of the template written as a regular page, called inorganic_stylesheet1. If this should be called something else, please feel free to rename it and the related image file. It was created by taking the Wikipedia:Chemical_infobox template, chopping it down and editing it mercilessly. It will allow us to upload a lot of pages without having to spend hours tracking down molar entropy for gaseous samarium chloride. The table includes what I would consider only the bare essentials, nothing more. The idea is that in the future someone could (if they wish) upgrade this more basic page to the more detailed version. However, in most cases, most people would be delighted to find even the short form information in Wikipedia- for the majority of compounds I think it would be entirely sufficient. I have also put up a typical example, samarium(III) chloride so you can see how a typical compound might look.

Please give feedback! If people like this format, I would like to get a basic set of compounds done in this format.

Walkerma 19:42, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)

UPDATE: I have put up some pages in this format, please take a look, give comments. See lithium chloride, potassium chloride, magnesium chloride and a new page, aluminium chloride. I plan to do a few more chlorides in coming weeks as time allows.

Feb 2005- See discussion on Walkerma's page.

Hi, Martin, as the infobox is now up at this project page itself (after much moving around of both the box and the discussion about it), I took the liberty to strike out the misdirecting information from your text here.
Importantly, I'd like to fully agree with your remark that the short version of the inorganic table is by far not short enough. I'd rather like the shortiness of the organic table. Could you reduce the inorg one as much as the org one? Wim van Dorst 22:19, 2005 Apr 16 (UTC).

Thanks for the reorganisation, Wim- I know things had kind of evolved, and needed some tidying up. I like the way you've set up the talk pages (even though it looks from the above like I'm repeating myself- yes, I admit I did cut & paste some things!). I had the impression when I started that some people worked in one corner and others in another corner, with the left hand not knowing what the right was doing. I hope that the changes help to reduce this problem. I like the disclaimer text too- unobtrusive, but we're nicely covered.

As for the inorganics table, I've been very happy with it, and it only takes me about 20 minutes to fill it out, but that's because I have all of the books laid out in my home office. I can certainly come up with a very basic one, and I'll call it "simple" so it can be seen to be comparable to the organic one. I'll try to do that soon. I'd also like to make some changes to the so-called "main" template- which I don't think has been used by anyone here in over a year as far as I can tell- though the Germans seem to be using a simpler version of it. See my comments above on this page. I took a very close look at the history of the current version, and it seemed that lots of people added things to it, but no one took things away. I would like to remove much of the safety information, and replace that with a link. My impression is that I have never actually seen the current version of the "standard table" used in full by anyone (though ammonia is close)- having created a time-consuming "monster" table, this table was then abandoned by its creators! Earlier versions of the table were much more reasonable, and these are the versions you see actually in use more. I may even add one or two things- I really like the "related compounds" idea- but rest assured it should be a lot sharper overall. So unless anyone objects strongly to my suggestions here, I will start to edit the "standard" table in 2-4 weeks time, as time allows. Walkerma 03:28, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Martin, don't wait another fortnight for improvements. You have good ideas: go for it! I recommend to reduce the short inorg template by moving that related-compounds part to the big chembox template. That'll be a good step. And then I would like to propose to further reduce by moving the structure details too: that are rather difficult data to find (for people without big books on their desks. And what about moving the product name to the header field, Wim van Dorst 20:26, 2005 Apr 17 (UTC).

Odor

In my opinion the parameter "odor" should be removed, as the previous "psychological" classification of smell sensations has been shown to be obsolete and inaccurate. Also the number of primary odors is not at all clear. It can vary from at least 100 to perhaps more than 1,000. Discrete odor blindnesses have been proved to exist for many of these. For more info, see Guyton:Textbook of medical physiology, ISBN 072168677X. --Eleassar777 11:32, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I think that's a fair point. I will be doing a major revamp of this template soon, I will take out that section. There's also the safety issue- we discourage people from sniffing things too much unless we know they're safe. I think the odour issue is best handled in the introductory paragraph in cases (like limonene) where it's appropriate, but for many things it's irrelevant anyway. Walkerma 14:58, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)
  • Good point. Odor is out of the template. Wim van Dorst 20:00, 2005 May 4 (UTC).

May I ask why it is still present in the infobox of e.g. the article hydrochloric acid? Does it have to be removed manually from all the articles the part of which it is? --Eleassar777 20:30, 4 May 2005 (UTC)

  • yes: all the infoboxes in all wikipages are fixed into the text. The template is only useful for starting a new infobox. If you want to replace an outdated one, you'll have to do the whole laborious work of substituting the (empty) new infobox into that wikipage, copy/re-keying/moving all numbers into the new table and finally deleting the old table. Wim van Dorst 21:35, 2005 May 4 (UTC).

New Wikipedia colour scheme: ClockWorkSoul

Hi, all. I have applied the new colour scheme ClockWorkSoul, which is generally chosen for the page-wide banner templates, to all four of the chemical infoboxes. Actually, I'm a sucker for standards, but this time I see that the dividing horizontal lines on my Unix-box come out very poorly. What do you think? Wim van Dorst 22:40, 2005 May 2 (UTC). I used the lithium aluminium hydride and dimethylsulfone as examples. Wim van Dorst 22:49, 2005 May 2 (UTC)

I think that scheme is fine for the inorganic pages, the colour change is fairly small. (Is it usual to take out the dividing line between the two columns? If that's the norm, I'm OK with it.) However I think it's good to distinguish organics from inorganics, so I really like Cacycle's grey-blue version, which has become a "standard" for most organics. I'll go with the group's overall opinion, though. Walkerma 00:13, 3 May 2005 (UTC)
Yes, you're right, it is not good to completely loose the dividing lines. They are not in the colour scheme per se, but a result of using styles (as per the scheme). I have added to the styles to see several important dividing lines again. Example is up at hydrochloric acid. Comments? Wim van Dorst 22:03, 2005 May 3 (UTC).

I'm pleased that you like my ClockworkSoul's Coffee Roll color scheme. Let me know if there's anything I can do to adjust or improve upon it for you. – ClockworkSoul 17:43, 4 May 2005 (UTC)

Could we reduce the number of infoboxes to three?

There is a good chembox template now, that really always should be considered for a Chemicals WikiPage. Then there are two nice and handy simple chemboxes for organic compounds and for inorganic compounds, which are for less known chemicals or for Chemicals wikipages still in a stub phase. Can we declate that enough? I'd rather remove the short inorganic for the Chemical infobox wikipage (Sorry Martin), and start using the other three for real. We can elaborate this recommendation in the text and in the wikipedia:WikiProject Chemicals activities much better too. Wim van Dorst 05:31, 2005 May 4 (UTC).

By the way, can someone remove odor? See discussion above. --Eleassar777 13:19, 4 May 2005 (UTC). Done. WvD.

I have been very busy with exams looming, but I will endeavour to rewrite the main template by Friday May 6th. I disagree that the template is good at present, there are important things missing and some silly things (like odor!) included (see #Suggestions for the template). I don't know of any new pages that have used in the last year. If the consensus is against the rewritten version, we can always revert it. I like the way User:Cacycle rewrote my original "short form" so as to be flexible- you omit things that are irrelevent. For a "standard" template this is essential, but it's not set up that way at present- I will try to make it adaptable for covalent inorganics, covalent organics, ionic inorganics, etc. If we have something like that then I have less attachment to the short form inorganic template. However we may decide that having an intermediate between a 5 minute table and a one hour table is a good idea- what do others think? Walkerma 15:16, 4 May 2005 (UTC)
Martin, to have one really good chembox template, covering everything that is necessary but in a flexible way is IMHO the target. That is then the way to go for the FA-quality chemicals wikipages. No discounting on that: if it takes an hour to do it well, so be it. It's a joint effort of thousands, so all together we can spend some time on it. And only for all the other chemicals wikipages we offer two minimal infoboxes, sort of step up to the big thing. I guess, that is what we would call a minimum below which we're talking stub-quality. No half-baked infobox suggesting that a good job is done when it isn't, really. Wim van Dorst 20:26, 2005 May 4 (UTC).
I did a little bit of housekeeping (archiving old discussions about things that have been already done) in this page, leaving open all discussions about the content of the {{tl:chembox}} template. On the projectpage itself I did similar housekeeping, e.g., included the FAQ about How to use templates. To not push you too hard, I refrained from putting your May 6 target for the Chembox update on that page too, but of course you're free to add it as a personal reminder. ;-). I'm looking forward to the update, which I hope will spur things on quite a bit. Wim van Dorst 13:01, 2005 May 5 (UTC).
I have put up my draft version on my user page, please take a look. Walkerma 21:10, 5 May 2005 (UTC)

Supplementary pages for major compounds

Working on the main template, I came up with an solution to the problem of having a huge table (for completeness). This is the same solution used in the chemical literature, and indeed it is Wikipedia official policy- namely, if it is getting too long, start a new page. 98% of people accessing a page on hydrochloric acid or methanol want to know basic information, not standard molar entropy etc. Let's keep obscure information out of important pages. Therefore I suggest that the table should include the main things that will satisfy 98% of users, but include links from the table to an MSDS and to a supplementary page. This supplementary page would include thermodynamic data and spectral information useful to experienced chemists, without filling up bandwidth for thousands of schoolkids etc. I am writing the table in this way- I hope to post it by this evening (USA EStime) but would like feedback on this. Walkerma 15:59, 5 May 2005 (UTC)

  • Excellent idea! This is indeed a break-through idea! I really like to see this in effect. Are you thinking about adding a link in the bottom of the infobox to a detailed infobox on a separate page? Sounds good to me. Thinking on, this means that ultimately, we'll only have ONE simple chembox, with a link to some larger table (on a separate page) if necessary. Wim van Dorst 19:16, 2005 May 5 (UTC).

New chembox

I'd like to direct comments on the new chembox here. There is a draft version for people to look at. It attempts the impossible- to be compact & easy to use, yet suitable for any chemical compound. It uses the supplement idea (see above); detailed safety data are on an MSDS page (which might just be an external link), and thermodynamic & spectral data on the supplement page. As well as general feedback, I'd like people's specific thoughts- please vote for in the main table or in the supplement: Walkerma 21:56, 5 May 2005 (UTC)

  1. Refractive index Aldrich etc put this in all their catalogue entries, but is it widely used these days?
supplement: not widely used. Wim van Dorst.
  1. Viscosity I put in as "liquids only, optional", but should it still be in the supplement?
main table: especially with the remark Liquid only. Wim van Dorst.
  1. Dielectric constant I put in as "solvents & dielectrics only". I like to use it as rough guide to solvent polarity, but am I alone in this?
supplement: not widely used. Wim van Dorst.
  1. Dipole moment
main table: but only when the structure section is applied (which should be optional). Wim van Dorst.

For the rest I think we should make recommendations about the the Supplement page, e.g., specific names of section titles so that in the chembox you can directly link to that particular section. Notably, I strongly recommend to make only one supplement page and not several for the various sections. Wim van Dorst 08:36, 2005 May 6 (UTC).

  • Update comment: I really like the way the new chembox is developing. Excellent progress. Even the lines.... Wim van Dorst 20:01, 2005 May 11 (UTC).
  • My update comment- Thanks for updating the lines/colour, Wim. I think we can make the switch to this being the official version of the infobox on Monday May 16th. Ideally I'd like to hear comments from User:Cacycle before setting things in stone, as I'd hate to change it again too soon- one problem in the past has been the use of 73 different "standard" tables. To encourage standardisation we may need to spend some time converting some pages to the new style. A couple of unresolved issues:
  1. Will the colour for the organics still be blue as it is (in practice at least) currently? I would favour this, though it does make the standard table a little more complicated.
  2. The supplement page needs to be standardised. Wim, would you be able to take the three tables and make one big table out of it? Instead of the present |S&P| |Spectral| |Thermo| going across the page, I'd like to see one combined |S&P|Spectral|Thermo| or similar. I don't think I can do this- Wim, can you do this? Then we can create a supplement template. Walkerma 21:51, 11 May 2005 (UTC)
    • We're working now on one chembox, which has one proper colour scheme. Personally I like it when (in the end) the two simple chembox variant have exactly the same layout (colours, lines, wikilinks) albeit in shorter form. But let's discuss that later, if necessary.
    • I see now three tables which fold on the page. If the page is narrow (or the font large), it winds up as just one long table (with extra footers), If the page is wide (or the font tiny), there are three tables next to eachother. Where do you want it differently? Just one long long table? That's easy, but is is nice? Wim van Dorst 23:08, 2005 May 11 (UTC).
      • I already did the two simple chemboxes. Wim van Dorst 14:35, 2005 May 12 (UTC). And the supplement too. Is this what you have in mind (normal wiki-layout), or might perhaps just one longer (combined) be better (like the chembox itself)? Wim van Dorst 15:27, 2005 May 12 (UTC).
  • Yes, it looks great now. I will try to do the details you mention on my talk page. Walkerma 16:11, 12 May 2005 (UTC)
  • Update: I have put the toluene page into the new style. I don't have time to write the supplement page for it, maybe tomorrow. The table seems rather wider than it should be, and even the draft template has grown an inch or so in the last 24 hours. Is this necessary? I much prefer the skinnier table, it increases space for text and also reduces problems when printing articles. Please check the page and let us know what you think. Walkerma 19:49, 12 May 2005 (UTC)

Wim van Dorst asked me to comment. What I've seen till now is a great job. I have a few suggestions, although I am not a chemist nor a doctor yet (and I hope I did not say something silly ;). Where I use the word category, I mean a sub-box, a group of lines.

  • Correct links - "Ingestion" has been made a redirect to eating; the contents were moved to Wiktionary. This link should be corrected or removed, while other links should be formatted so that they bypass redirects (e.g. molecular formula; I mean put this in: [[chemical formula|molecular formula]]).
  • References in the bottom. Do they point to references of the topic described by the article or of the infobox? This should be defined (add e.g. "infobox references" or something).
  • Dissociation constants. There are three articles now: dissociation constant, acid dissociation constant, base dissociation constant; and two lines in the infobox. Perhaps the articles should be merged and the lines in the infobox replaced with "Dissociation costants". Besides this, are not Ka and Kb used as dissociation constants instead of their negative logarithms pKa and pKb?
  • The order of categories. It seems more natural to me to have it in the following order(from top to bottom): image, general, structure, properties, hazards, supplementary data page, related data compounds.
  • Related category: what is: "related ?"
  • "Chemical data" line in the category "supplementary data page". That sounds somewhat strange as other things in the category also can be considered chemical data. I don't have a suggestion.
  • "Related compounds" line in the category "Related molecules". Will it not interfere with "Other cations" and "Other anions"?
  • what about the line "Biological significance"? Would it be redundant or unusable? Or perhaps "Occurrence" (where in nature, or is the substance synthetic etc.)

Thanks, happy wiki-ing. --Eleassar777 20:32, 12 May 2005 (UTC)

  • Correct links: Done. Pfew, there were quite a lot of them.
  • References: Done. Good suggestion
  • Dissociation constants: For future work.
  • order of categories: I mainly agree and therefore move Hazards down.
  • Related: This is up to the person who fills the table. He/She is expected to be knowledgable, so no change.
  • Chemical data: Agree. The supplements page is still under construction, so no decisive change yet.
  • Related compounds: No problem here: the knowledged table filler will be able to make the organic/inorganic distinction to remove either field when inappropriate. no change.
  • Biological significance and Occurrence: Interesting. I think I rather want this in the main text.

Overall very good suggestions, most of which I have already implemented. I'm much obliged that you as an experienced non-chemical wikipedian had a fresh view at it. Thanks. Wim van Dorst 09:52, 2005 May 13 (UTC).

Thanks for having a look at my proposals and implementing some of them . May I just point out two things again: a) dissociation constant - that's K<d>, K<a> and K<b>, isn't it? And b) I also don't understand why properties come above structure. --Eleassar777 15:45, 13 May 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for your comments, Eleassar, they were very helpful & insightful, (for a "non-chemist" you seem to know plenty of chemistry!) Thanks Wim for chasing down the links, something I didn't do before or I'd never have got the draft done! Regarding the remaining loose ends-
Dissociation constants Indeed, the pKa (or pKb) is strictly speaking "Minus long to the base ten of the acid (or base) dissociation constant", but that's quite a mouthful to put on a data table. I've looked at a couple of books and they only ever refer to these things in the text as pKa without using words- though March's voluminous index says "pKa- see acidity constant." I would propose that we just use the term "acidity (pKa)" and "basicity (pKb)" in the table, using links for those unfamiliar with pKa. I will change the draft table to reflect that. Ka and Kb (the actual acid or base dissociation constant) are rarely thrown about in chemical conversations, I know organic chemists will always say, "That proton's got to be pretty acidic, around 6 (understood as pKa)." It is used in the same way as pH is used for aqueous solutions. They won't refer to Ka any more than people talk about the hydrogen ion concentration in the river.
Structure vs Properties This in effect mostly means Molecular scale properties vs Bulk properties. IMHO: Most people work with bulk matter and so things like density, BP etc are the main things people need, they should be near the top of the table, right below a drawing of the structure. I accept that the box would "flow" better with structural stuff first, but I think usage in this case trumps that. You should be able to type in "toluene" into Wikipedia and see structure, BP and density without a lot of scrolling. Walkerma 16:48, 13 May 2005 (UTC)
Template wikitext vs appearance on page Some of the things you things you mentioned earlier have a lot of guidance in the code to help people through, though of course this doesn't show up on the displayed page. I really like the "related compounds" link, this is one of the strengths of the element tables, but the problem is that toluene has different related compounds than copper(I) chloride. It's fairly open-ended because trying to pin it down to specifics makes it very clumsy. I think anyone proficient enough to be typing up this full length table should EITHER know what is meant for that particular compound, OR be able to work it out from similar pages. To assist things there are comments in the code like for Related compounds it says "A miscellaneous heading- use for covalent inorganics; e.g. for PCl3 you would list PCl5, POCl3, PF3, PBr3, NCl3 and AsCl3. Please omit if not applicable". Thanks again for your valuable help. Walkerma 16:48, 13 May 2005 (UTC)
The new infobox has been really well done and it was an honour for me to have contributed my two cents. Only dissociation constants still need to be replaced with acidity and basicity (or just plain pKa and pKb). Regards. --Eleassar777 07:28, 17 May 2005 (UTC)
I like what you've done with the infoboxes. Nice work! ^_^ ‣ᓛᖁ♀ᑐ 09:28, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Table resolving in various browsers: losing divider lines and border colour

As a proud co-developer of this new chembox, today I took a few minutes of a coffeebreak at work to have a look how the new chembox works out, now it is published. At work we have Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0. And it showed the table quite differently from what I expected. (Insert here some expletives not to be written in full). The problem is in the apperent different resolving of table code by the various browsers.

as in Mozilla browsers
as in Opera


The left version is as shown in Mozilla derived browsers (which is as the table is intended), such as in Mozilla, Firefox, Epiphany, etc. The right hand is as shown in Opera. The table in the MSIE browser looks like the Opera variant, but worse. Now what? Wim van Dorst 20:51, 2005 May 17 (UTC).

I just took a look, as I have IE 6.0 here- I found that in the template the lines disappear in IE where they are present in Mozilla Firefox (my default). Otherwise the differences are largely superficial. However in the toluene and HCl pages the lines are still there. Also, if you go to print the template from IE you get the lines in there. I notice that the resolution of you screen shot is poor- is that just an artifact of the screen shot? My IE page for HCl or toluene looks fine on the screen. (Martin Walker asking Wim van Dorst)
  1. Do we lose the lines in IE only in the original template? If I go back through history on my page to the edit that says "uploaded the new template to toluene and hydrochloric acid" the lines are still missing in IE, yet they are there in all versions of the toluene page. Martin Walker

Using external links in the infoboxes

A more serious problem that I noticed is probably a general one on Wikipedia- when you go to print, any external links are written out in full. That has the effect of widening out the table to fill or almost fill the page. The toluene page looks really bad- the text is crammed into about 3 cm on the left hand side. This happens with both Firefox and MSIE. Another related problem that I'd noticed before but never addressed- take a look at phosphorus tribromide, it should look OK. Then do a print preview- and in Mozilla notice how the image goes down past the table, as it has to squeeze the page into a narrower space. Now try the same page in MSIE6.0, you will see that it prints the image right over the top of the table! I think this was in the back of my mind when I said I wanted a skinny table- but this business of the expanded links makes that go out of the window! Where should we go next?

  1. Are we using an incorrect format for inserting external links? If so, we need to find the correct format, and rigorously enforce that in the table, to stop the unwanted expansion. If we are already following protocol, then should we just tell people not to put external links in the table?
  2. Regarding the table/image conflict, we probably need to be more careful about checking browser and print compatibilities when we first write the pages. We have some old Macs down the hall, I will check IE and Netscape on there. I know I've been bad at doing this...
  3. Are there other issues I'm missing with the IE version? If so, please elaborate, Wim. Walkerma 00:54, 18 May 2005 (UTC)
I am for discouraging external links within the table, even if it means that we have to add See also: MSDS to the bottom of every page... Physchim62 06:24, 18 May 2005 (UTC)
Me 2. I did remove them from the infobox of hydrochloric acid for trial, and I like the printout much better.
This is an unfortunate feature of Mediawiki; there is currently no way to control the display of external links. However, it seems that the behavior may change in version 1.5 — see http://bugzilla.wikipedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2301. ‣ᓛᖁ♀ᑐ 09:00, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I have updated the toluene page too. Any thoughts on the problem of printing tables & images together in IE? Do we just try to write narrow images? See PBr3 Walkerma 01:46, 19 May 2005 (UTC)

Wording of the Disclaimer

I reverted some latest tweaking there, so as to have the most accurate disclaimer, referring only the potential inaccuracy of 'information contained in the table' and not 'the table', referring to 'hazards', not 'safety' (that section there is called Hazards). Nonetheless, I also misread the 100.000 kPa thing, first thinking about onehundredthousand kiloPascal. So I reworded it to read 'by definition'. Wim van Dorst 22:20, 2005 May 18 (UTC).

  • The current wording of the "hazards" sentence is poor English: might I suggest "includes any information on hazards, which..." or "includes any hazard information, which..." See the essay "English chemists secretly practice German vice" in The Chemist's English by Robert Schoenfeld for a light-hearted discussion of the (mal)formation of English compound nouns ;) Physchim62 23:38, 19 May 2005 (UTC)
    • I wouldn't mind a copy, if only for bedtime reading. Would you have an on-line source? I changed the disclaimer text, btw, albeit slightly differently from your suggestions here. Please comment. Wim van Dorst 21:39, 2005 May 20 (UTC).
  • It's copyright, so you'd need a library (VCH published the edition that I have). Disclaimer text is now OK with me. Physchim62 22:23, 20 May 2005 (UTC)

Formalization?

Shall we try to formalize the three chemical infoboxes as a Wikipedia policy (set in rock and poured in concrete)? Or as a Wikipedia guideline (just the rock :-)? I think we should go for guideline. Wim van Dorst 22:40, 2005 Jun 2 (UTC).

  1. 18 out of 27 A-Class articles have non standard tables (including 5 which are in HTML format, not wikipipe).
  2. Many many tables have external links, when we know that this can cause browser problems, not to mention the fragility of external links (almost all the links to "Hazardous Chemicals Database" are broken, for example)
  3. Wikipedia:WikiProject Drugs uses a non-compatible format for their {{drugbox}}: we will need to compromise for articles which fall under both Drugs and Chemicals.

I vote festina lente. Physchim62 06:20, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I would say guideline too. Chemistry is too full of exceptions to be able to set things in concrete. As we say in Newcastle Upon Tyne (my original home town), let's gan canny. 16:16, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Then I close this discussion by simply putting the guideline template up. Wim van Dorst 19:28, 2005 Jun 3 (UTC).

Component-based infoboxes

Would it be a good idea to build the infoboxes from components, as at Wikipedia:WikiProject Astronomical objects#Starbox tree? You could have:

and simply pick and choose which to include. This way instead of having two totally separate templates for "short" articles, and translating to a new template when the article expands, you simply grow the infobox as required. --Phil | Talk 11:27, Jun 10, 2005 (UTC)

Hi Phil, thanks for pointing this out. I previously took notice of this technique, and it is indeed very nice. The thing is that I, for one, see the {{chembox}} as one total block of data. It is all obligatory for a good (A-Class) chemical compound article, apart from where is it explicitly indicated. There is no modularity in the information provision there. The two simple boxes are only for starter and stub articles in the WikiProject.
The total of three infoboxes covering it all in a straightforward subst:template installation (fast code!) are very easy to maintain and use, contrary to your proposal (six chemboxes templates, and all fields in them again as templates), with nested templates as resource grabbers.
So all in all, I see two major things in favour of retaining the current version of the infoboxes. Not that there aren't any improvements possible:
  • use of CSS for table makeup
  • better MSIE/FireFox/Opera support
  • etc.
which is already doable with the {{chembox header}} template that we use for table layout definition. Wim van Dorst 22:16, 2005 Jun 10 (UTC).

When to use full and when to use simple chemboxes

I do not agree with the current text when to use the full and when to use simple chemboxes in articles. I suggest to use the following explanation instead:

Chembox infobox for full articles

The {{Chembox}} infobox template is applicable for all chemical substances including organic and inorganic compounds. This infobox is the recommended infobox to use where detailed information is appropriate, for example:

Simple infoboxes

Two simple infoboxes are covering the most important data for organic and for inorganic compounds where in-depth information is not available or required. These templates can be used for:
Simple infoboxes may later be replaced by the full infobox or expanded stepwise.

I have not checked if all examples exist or contain an infobox. Feel free to add the respective articles and infoboxes - especially the acetic anhydride article is a shame :-) Cacycle 7 July 2005 19:55 (UTC)

  • Hi, Cacycle, You have used more words than originally to exactly formulate what I fully agree with. But what is the important thing that is wrong with the original text, which in my humble opinion means the same? Its brevity? Wim van Dorst July 7, 2005 20:10 (UTC). PS The acetic anhydride doesn't have any infobox yet, but menthol has a nice one. That is the reason why the former is an A-Class article in the Chemicals wikiproject, and the latter would be listed as Stub if it were in the wikiproject. WvD.
Speaking as someone who hated the old infobox, I have to say I now agree with the text as is. We should use the starter box for stubs and short articles, but a full-length article deserves the longer table. The new infobox is limited to only important data- minor things are spun off onto a supplementary page (still not written for menthol, I accept). I would argue anyway that adenine is common, and as such it deserved complete information- wouldn't the pKa or pKb value be useful? Isn't solubility information and chiral rotation on ergotamine or cholesterol useful? Isn't it convenient to be able to be at a page on benzofuran and have a convenient direct link to indole without wading through text? The "non-useful" entries for complex natural products such as dipole moment, coordination geometry, related anions, etc, are simply deleted from the box, but for a simple inorganic you would delete the SMILES and the chiral rotation entries. Is there anything in the menthol page (besides flash point) that would be inappropriate for, say, cholesterol? Heck, I even managed a supplement page (albeit rather sparse) for gold(III) chloride, not exactly common! Walkerma 7 July 2005 20:44 (UTC)
  • Sorry for not making my point clear. The current version is somehow self-contradictory: On one hand it says the full infobox is the recommended infobox to use "where detailed information is appropriate". On the other hand it continuous with "and for high quality chemicals wikipages" and "This template is recommended by the WikiProject Chemicals for all its wikipages.".
My point is that for many articles - even for high quality pages - the full chembox is inappropriate. We have to keep in mind that this is an encyclopedia, not a database of chemical and physical properties. For many compounds the chemistry part of the article is just a small part (e.g. see the drug articles). The readability of such articles and infoboxes would clearly suffer from chemical data deserts. The full infobox (mis)leads to listing all available data even if they are without any foreseeable significance for our readers - chemists as well as laymen.
It might often be more appropriate to extend the simple infoboxes, e.g. with pKa or pKb values, if this is an important property of a compound instead of automatically adding them to every compound just because the data exists somewhere.
This is in no way a criticism of existing tables or disrespect for the work we put into setting them up. I think at the current stage most full chemboxes are appropriate (although menthol might be a borderline case...). It is also no criticism of the full chembox structure which now looks pretty good. I just don't want that the current guideline misleads us into wasting our time with setting up full infoboxes where it is clearly inappropriate and at the cost of the article's quality.
Cacycle 7 July 2005 23:06 (UTC)
I agree that in cases where the project interfaces with other projects, we need to tread lightly- we had a long discussion with the Drugs Wikiproject regarding paracetamol which came to exactly that conclusion- paracetamol has a page principally because it is a drug, not because of its chemical properties. However in cases where the chemical aspects are the major part of the article, it is perfectly appropriate to use the full chembox.
I think a lot of these disagreements come from a difference in perspective. When I write a page such as gold(III) chloride, I see it as part of a Wikipedia five years from now, where every chloride in the periodic table has a full-length article. I imagine millions of chemists worldwide using Wikipedia as a valuable source of information, and millions of schoolkids and college students writing papers on things like "The Chemistry of Gold" finding useful "nuggets" of information there. I am aware that many others see a much more limited chemical content on Wikipedia, or they focus on where Wikipedia is now. However I have been astonished to see the pace of change. When I wrote aluminium chloride around six months ago I think I was the only Wikipedian at the time writing lengthy articles on metal chlorides. I joked a little later that "I will probably be bored by the time I write a page on NbCl5". In January an article on NbCl5 would have seemed rather perverse- yet now I find that someone else has already written a significant article (rather technical IMHO) on it, and what is more this now seems perfectly appropriate, as we have about half of the metal chlorides in the periodic table covered. Or take a look at Category:Chemical_compounds_by_element to see how far we've come. What I have seen is that as the chemistry content grows we get more chemists writing articles, and therefore the chemistry content goes up etc. etc. I have absolutely no doubt that many things like cholesterol and benzofuran will have extensive articles with full-length tables eventually, quite possibly by the end of the year. That doesn't make it a database instead of an encyclopedia, it just makes it a bigger and better encyclopedia. And think what an amazing resource we will have by 2010! Walkerma 8 July 2005 03:42 (UTC)
I agree with User:Cacycle almost entirely, so I will mention my one disagreement first! Some articles are going to stay with a short form chembox for the simple reason that the data necessary for the full form does not exist in verifiable form. Short form boxes can also always be extended to provide important information beyond that which is in the template, as I have done for amino acid articles.
My rule of thumb is to not to use the long form where this will be substantially longer than the article text (although I allow myself exceptions where I intend to extend the article myself, as in arsenic trioxide). The problem as to whether these articles can become A-Class is one that we set ourselves, and one that I am quite happy not to worry about yet! A short form chembox is better than no chembox at all—if this were not true, the templates would not be there! It has to be said that is substantially easier to convert a short form chembox into a full one than to insert a full form chembox from scratch.
As yet I have had no comments on the text in the style guidelines, where I deliberately tried to find a middle line between my position and Wim's (Wim: maybe I failed, but I did try ;)
Physchim62 8 July 2005 09:56 (UTC)
  • Hi, PC, I'm really very sorry to inform you that you have horribly failed in treading the middle line: in your Style Guidelines you write about the infobox exactly MY position. You missed your own position at least by a mile :-). Now, as we apparently all feel very much alike, can we get on with adding whichever chembox you consider most appropriate and creating A-Class articles? Wim van Dorst July 8, 2005 19:38 (UTC).

Units

At the moment the units are like this example: g/mol. But they should be like this: g mol-1. I think the template should be changed but also each individual article that already implements the table needs to be changed. Does anyone agree? Borb 23:10, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

No, I absolutely do not agree. Why do you want to use a completely uncommon and difficult to write and to understand nomenclature? Cacycle 23:46, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I agree with Cacycle. I think that g/mol is accessible to most. Changing all articles would be alot of work for such a triviality. Also, you will need a multiplication symbol between g and mol-1 to be technically correct. ~K 02:42, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I concur with User:Cacycle. g/mol is proper unit and easy to read, however use of Amu is good choice too.HappyApple 02:45, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)
The chemboxes use g/mol as a compromise, given the technical constraints of Wikipedia. Borb is right that IUPAC and IUPAP prefer the symbolism g mol−1: note
  1. that there should be a narrow space (not a multiplication sign) between the g and the mol, however narrow spaces do not exist in HTML so we have to use a non-breaking space (& n b s p ;)
  2. that the superscript should have a & m i n u s ; sign, not a hyphen
  3. that amu (no capitals please) is an acceptable unit, as is Da, although personally I don't like them.
Individual editors are welcome to use g mol−1 or amu, but I don't see a consensus arising to change the template, and I certainly can't see anyone changing all the tables that are out there: we have enough work converting the old-style and HTML tables to the new format!
Are there any other comments on units before I write this up into the style guidelines? Physchim62 09:21, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Either a space or a centered dot (·) are acceptable dividers in these units. BIPM, NIST Also, both the solidus and the exponent are legitimate. --Gene Nygaard 28 June 2005 06:03 (UTC)
No, "amu" and "Da" not acceptable. The "unified atomic mass unit" is only acceptable for use with SI with the specific symbol "u". See BIPM rules,NIST rules, and atomic mass unit.
Change centipoise (cP) to millipascal-seconds (mPa·s), or Pa·s with another or no prefix. Gene Nygaard 28 June 2005 06:03 (UTC)

Agree both with PC and Cacycle (still no personalized name, I see, but welcome back in the activities): g/mol is most informative. Further things to be put forward for the style guidelines:

  • cP (centipoise) for Viscosity. In the text the Pa.s is suggested to be allowed, but while trying to find that for all the boxes that I fill in, I hardly ever see it. No comments on preference, though (it is an easy calculation), but perhaps a recommendation is called for?
  • g/cm3 for Density. As a bulk chemical supplier employee, I don't normally use this unit, but I agree that tonne/m3 are perhaps overdone ;-). Alternatives are allowed in the text, but I wonder whether we should make a recommendation? Wim van Dorst 21:13, 2005 Jun 24 (UTC).

There is one more thing about units. I know it sounds like i'm being padantic but I think that standards should be followed as closely as possible in an encyclopaedia. The SI unit for temperature is K not degrees C. The melting/boiling points should be in kelvin. It is unliekly that people that do not know what a Kelvin is are going to be concerned about melting and boiling points of specific chemicals anyway. Likewise with other units, anyone interested in densities will understand g cm−3

Borb 22:26, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)

No, you are wrong. Unlike those centipoises and "amu" which are not only not SI, but not acceptable for use with SI either, the degree Celsius is an SI unit of temperature. [1] [2]
That doesn't mean we can't standardize on kelvins for things like boiling points. But when specified standard conditions such as 0 °C, 20 °C, or 25 °C are used, those are the numbers we should be using, none of those 298 K and 293.15 K numbers.
BTW, you remind me that a pet peeve of mine is people who do not know that kelvins are not capitalized (or that they do add an "s" in the plural). Maybe that should be mentioned in the guidelines, too. Gene Nygaard 28 June 2005 06:03 (UTC)
Please, let's use normal g/mol, °C, cP and similar, and spend the time on actually finding the data to put into the tables, and adding filled out infoboxes to pages which need them. Wim van Dorst June 28, 2005 21:16 (UTC).
I support Wim's last comment. When I put the table together, I tried to make a reasonable balance between SI and real-world. I think I suggested cP, because as Wim says nearly all tables report this, but I mentioned that Pa.s were acceptable. As for K vs °C, this has been debated before- the reality is that nearly all (organic) chemistry journals I read still use °C, and most of our users will be much more familiar with that- but physical chemists & physicists tend to like K, so let's put that in as well if convenient. Regarding g/mol vs. g mol−1, I think both forms are still in common use, and we can accept either- though if the former is considered "incorrect" I won't object to us changing that. I think amu are a bad idea, IMHO, let's stick to molar mass not molecular weight/mass, which (besides IUPAC issues) can get into awkward problems with isotopes, mass# vs. average atomic mass, etc. I want to keep producing & upgrading articles for now, and I find the current table is easy to work with, so I agree with Wim, let's fill up some tables! Walkerma 29 June 2005 04:56 (UTC)

Format within tables?

I am noticing that there is a certain amount of minor reverting of edits going on within tables, for example with propionic acid. Things I have seen, along with my personal preference, are as follows:

  • The "nowiki" there or not there around [] in CAS nos. I have been told that these brackets tell the computer to look for a reference or link- is this so? If so let's keep the nowikis, if not let's delete from the template.
    • There is no need for the "nowiki", so yes, I delete them when I find them. Single brackets are used in Wikipedia as a mark for an external link, but the software treats them as normal characters unless it finds an http straight afterwards. Physchim62 15:55, 16 July 2005 (UTC)
      • It is removed from the template now. Wim van Dorst 21:32, 16 July 2005 (UTC).
  • Capitalise or not to capitalise words like soluble, miscible, corrosive that appear in the right hand column. I mildly prefer capitalised, but is this contrary to Wiki policy?
    • I prefer capitalised as well. Physchim62 15:55, 16 July 2005 (UTC)
      • This is an anglo-thing: I definitely do not like the capitalization where there is no need for it. Titles, beginning of sentences: that's alright, (see the style guides) but for simple words in sentences (and tables), capitalization is IMHO superfluous. Wim van Dorst 21:32, 16 July 2005 (UTC).
  • Units such as °C adjacent to the number, or with a space between? In the US the latter is a rigid standard, the only possible exception is %, so I strongly prefer that.
    • °C is an exception (along with °F). There should not be a space between the number and the degree sign (Source: the Green Book). However, there should be a space for K and for all other units (apart from °, ' and "). Physchim62 15:55, 16 July 2005 (UTC)
      • I agree with PC, to follow the standard. In the table template, I put the '?°' as a strong suggestion to the user of the template to not put a space there. Wim van Dorst 21:32, 16 July 2005 (UTC).
A space between the number and the unit symbol is clearly required by ISO 31-0 and by the NIST (the U.S. national standards laboratory) Guide for the use of the International System of Units (SI)[3] and by the Oxford Style Manual (2003), section 7.5. See the recent discussion, all within the past month, at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)/archive 25 and Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)/archive23. Gene Nygaard 22:57, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

We should agree on how to do this, then perhaps write it up in the style guide. This could also include some help on whitespace also. Walkerma 06:23, 16 July 2005 (UTC)

While someone is touching up the template, can we remove the blank lines that appear in some sections (particularly in the Supplementary Data Page section)? Minor personal querk, but they annoy me! Physchim62 15:55, 16 July 2005 (UTC)
  • Yep, that's a good recommendation too. Done that as well I leave the style guide to others. Wim van Dorst 21:32, 16 July 2005 (UTC).

Thermodynamic data

I raised this question on the Water page as well but it may be more appropriate here. Why is there no thermodynamic data in the infobox. It is much more useful than some of the information you have in there now. The infobox should have heat of combustion, heat of formation, heat of fusion, heat of vaporization and heat capacities at STP. You have the viscosity in there, which is a number that really means nothing to normal people unless they compare it to something htey know or they have already seen the liquids viscosity, and is used mostly in pumping calculations while thermodynamic data is used in many calculations.

To get the thermodynamic data, click on the words "Thermodynamic data" and that will give you all of the thermodynamic data we have at present. If some of these data are missing, it's just because no one has uploaded them as yet. We moved away from having thermodynamic data written out in full in the main infobox because this section was beginning to dominate the page, so there was little room for other content. The articles are aimed at a variety of audiences, ranging from 10 year olds to PhD chemists, and these users have a wide variety of needs and interests. For example, as a working organic chemist myself, I have never had the need for any of these data in 25 years (12 years in industrial research), except for teaching thermodynamics!
The water_(molecule) page is using an older form of the thermodynamic data table, so it is possible that data are missing- the new form of the data table is linked from the Chembox page, you can see it here. We will be updating the water page in the next few months to comply with this format. In the meantime, if you have a specific piece of data you need, ask me on my talk page and I will be sure to answer your query directly. Walkerma 17:27, 22 July 2005 (UTC)
I see, this is a little misleading becuase most links are to definitions, so I thought that clicking on the thermodynamic data link would send me to a page about what thermodynamic data was in general. I could trapse around and look this data up too but wikipedia is just so much faster and easier than almost any other information website, I just like having a one stop shop for all things i need to know

I understand your point - when developing the infobox we experimented with labels such as "click here for data" and so on, but it was regarded as clumsy or ugly. The other way into the data is to click on the "supplementary data page" (a bolded link) which is clearly not a definition, but more data- this was seen as a solution to the problem, though clearly not a perfect one. I hope that most of the more technical users like yourself will become familiar with this aspect. I know it took me a while to understand several things on Wikipedia - e.g. that the foreign language links on the left weren't just for the home pages, but for the specific pages.

As for Wikipedia being a one-stop shop, that is what we are hoping for. We already have (I think) several hundred chemical compounds with articles, of which about 30 so far are what we call "A-class", but this number is growing. I hope in a few years you will be able to get all of the data you need right here (or on a supplementary page, at least)! Walkerma 15:36, 25 July 2005 (UTC)

  • We have roughly a thousand pages on chemical compounds on Wikipedia, which range in quality from the truely excellent to the excruciatingly awful! I agree with Walkerma that on many pages there is simply not the space to include full thermodynamic data in the main article: this certainly applies to water, and to ammonia (a page I am working on at the moment). There is too much data available for these simple compounds. However, there is a compromise possible for compounds where there is less data available in the literature. For these, the supplementary page is probably unnecessary, and the thermodynamic data can go as a section in the main table. I tend to list ΔfH° and S°, from which one can calculate ΔfG° and reaction ΔG°. Do not forget that thermodynamic data is not available for all compounds! Rhodium(III) chloride is one such example which I have come accross recently. Physchim62 18:26, 25 July 2005 (UTC)

Chemdata supplement

I have created a template {{Chembox supplement}} to produce a blank version of the supplementary data page with the necessary headers which are linked to from the main chembox. Hence, clicking on the redlink on the main article page, typing {{subst:chembox supplement}} and saving the new page will produce a supplementary data page ready for completing.

May I take this opportunity to plead for an nth renaming of the supplementary data page (at least for new pages) to {{{PAGENAME}}} (data page). This make it consistent with other data pages in Wikipedia. I shall experiment with this on ammonia. Physchim62 15:49, 14 August 2005 (UTC)

Can you furnish us with some examples of this type of page being used elsewhere? I don't think the element data pages are equivalent, as they do not contain supplementary data. If there are good equivalents elsewhere called (data page) then I agree that we should switch. If not, then I prefer to include the word supplementary/supplement in there somewhere, to indicate that it contains data not in the main table.
I would also like to suggest moving the MSDS section up to near the top of the page. Currently the Chembox "External MSDS" links to this supplement, so many people coming to this page will be trying to get MSDS data. An external link is only one line, whereas the tables take up a lot of screen space. Can we put this one line link near the top please, as I have done at toluene? If no one objects, I will make the change to the template.
Once we agree to the above, and any other template changes, then we should formally adopt version 1.0 of the supplementary data page. Walkerma 01:40, 29 August 2005 (UTC)
  • I find the {{{PAGENAME}}} (data page) suggestion to be sound. I like it because it is:
    • Systematic
    • Less idiosyncratic than {{PAGENAME}} chemdata supplement: The unitiated might have a prayer of finding it. Along these lines, {{PAGENAME}} (data) might be an even better name.
    • Parenthetical, and therefore easily referenced on other pages using the pipe trick.
Shimmin 13:37, August 31, 2005 (UTC)

Background color of chemboxes

Check Cyclopentadiene to see why it is probably a very bad idea to have a table background color other than white. Since we cannot use transparent formulas (the transparency feature of png is not supported by MS Internet Explorer) the borders of the formula image are visible. While it did not matter for the pictures of the inorganic salts, this is very, very ugly for formulas. So I plead to change the normal cell background to white. Cacycle 20:05, 28 August 2005 (UTC)

Yes, the background for the image cell should definitely be white. The rest of the table background is okay, though, isn't it? The tables would look a bit plain if they were all white. ‣ᓛᖁ♀ᑐ 20:33, 28 August 2005 (UTC)
I fully admit that I'm colour blind, but my tables, and background are white. And I agree that is rather plain. But where is now the change? Can somebody who actually sees these changes make a screenprint for me, please? Wim van Dorst 21:25, 28 August 2005 (UTC).
Ah, hm. It's a very subtle shade of off-white (I hadn't realized how subtle until now); #fffbff instead of #ffffff. Also, it probably won't look different from white if your monitor doesn't display truecolor. Sodium hydroxide uses a somewhat different, more colorful style, which I guess might be better if the current style looks too white. ‣ᓛᖁ♀ᑐ 22:10, 28 August 2005 (UTC)
Tables have been coming out distinctly grey for me recently, whereas I would prefer white, but it didn't bother me enough to go searching for the reason. I noticed a TOCColors tag somewhere in the header which I though might have something to do with it. Sodium hydroxide is a non-standard version of the old format (someone's experiment?). Physchim62 09:05, 29 August 2005 (UTC)
Yes, class="toccolours" invokes the CSS settings that control the table colors and layout, which is much simpler than specifying individual cell colors. Personally, I think I prefer the table's current appearance. ‣ᓛᖁ♀ᑐ 09:27, 29 August 2005 (UTC)
OK can someone who knows what they're doing (ie, not me!) change the colour of the background for the image cell to force #ffffff. The background for the rest of the table can be left as it is for the time being. Physchim62 09:47, 29 August 2005 (UTC)
Eequor has already changed the article, but the first link points to the ugly version. I will change the template later today. BTW, I think it looks better if all normal cells have the same color (this would be white) than if we have white for the structure or image cell and grey for the rest. Cacycle 11:49, 29 August 2005 (UTC)
Real white is fine with me. Yet, as we follow the CoffeeRoll colour scheme, perhaps that off-white was introduced?. And although it is plain, I agree with Cacycle that all cells the same colour is best-looking. Wim van Dorst 20:15, 29 August 2005 (UTC).
I am just a beginner on chemical articles here at wikipedia, but is it really relevant to argue about the background color of chemboxes? HappyApple 02:37, 30 August 2005 (UTC)

subst: must die!

Why in the world does this page recommend to use subst:? Why not make it a full-fledged template and use it as templates were designed to be used? If the full text of the template is copied into each article with subst:, then if someone fixes a typo or tweaks the formatting of the template, it won't do any good! All the articles will have to be changed manually! That's ridiculous. —Keenan Pepper 03:00, 10 September 2005 (UTC)

I agree with you and if noone objects I would like to fix this problem and make it into a real infobox. David Björklund 20:54, 19 October 2005 (UTC){{
This is more advanced wiki-markup that I don't understand. I would guess that most WPChem participants don't understand. (We're just chemists after all.) Is there a link you can supply to explain the difference between full-flegded templates and subst:-templates? ~K 04:28, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

This is not really the best place to discuss Wikipedia:Transclusion costs and benefits. Suffice it to say that by using subst:, the WikiProject avoids the costs of transclusion, while having a table which is easy to edit for less experienced editors. Please do not change it. Physchim62 12:37, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the explaination. ~K 14:35, 20 October 2005 (UTC)
If you understood that page, you're doing better than I am! (kidding, but only just ;) Physchim62 14:54, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

For completeness sake, I agree with PC here: the chem infobox is rather larger to make in into flexible templates. It would probably have to be built up out of numerous smaller ones, leading to very complex editing. And considering that we're only talking of several hundred pages with it, I rather prefer to not have it changed. Wim van Dorst 20:13, 20 October 2005 (UTC).

I am all for substituting a table into the article made of parts to be transcluded and it would be cool if David Björklund would sacrifice his precious time to do this. I would say we do not have to care at all about system resources for that - that would be like switching off pictures to save computing power :-S Cacycle 20:27, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

But what would be the advantage of using transclusion? Physchim62 03:56, 21 October 2005 (UTC)
Melting point 110 °C
Something like {{chembox/melting point|110 °C}} in the article would result in:
This format is self-explaining and not more complex than the existing table. By editing just the templates it would be easy to change the table layout or the wikilinks of all existing chemboxes without modyfying hundreds (or soon thousands) of articles. If I remember correctly there were quite some changes made to the chembox during the last year... Cacycle 09:14, 21 October 2005 (UTC)
On the other hand, the sort of changes that have been made to the chembox over the last year would still have required editing every article as well as changing the templates. We already use transcluded templates for the format of the box: {{chembox header}} and {{chembox disclaimer}} for example, not forgetting {{nfpa}}. You seem to be proposing that we change all the chemboxes yet again for no change in article appearance and no greater simplicity in creating new tables (there would still have to be a template {{chembox}} to contain all these new templates, and the selction of which lines to include remains an editor task). I remain unconvinced. Physchim62 12:40, 21 October 2005 (UTC)
Speaking as someone who doesn't know a transclusion from a cisclusion, I have been quiet on this, but can I suggest we try the idea out? I think that I have very slight support of the new idea. The advantage as I see it is that it would be easier to follow- I do agree that the present tables are very awkward to read the code if you're not used to them. I suggest that we don't need to manually change all of our current chemboxes to include the new template style- though it might be a good idea anyway to list the pages that have the present table. Simply use the new style table for all new uses of the table.Walkerma 13:44, 21 October 2005 (UTC)
The way I see it, the only way these one line templates will be useful would be to include them in the subst:Chembox template. Since the chembox is rather stable now, I don't see any advantages to making this change. We've already done all the hard work, so I think we should leave it alone. ~K 15:33, 21 October 2005 (UTC)
  • Agree with K and PC: the chembox isn't a changeable thing. We had a development spell, where significant changes where made (which would not have been any easier with an fully transcluded chembox), and now the chembox is pretty fixed. Better let it be hard to change: then no-one in his right mind will easily condider that it must be further 'improved'. Leave the chembox alone. Unless you yourself take it on you to edit all ~300 articles currently using the current version! Wim van Dorst 19:33, 21 October 2005 (UTC).

If anyone really wants to use transclusion, please see Template:Chembox transcluded. Physchim62 11:12, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

  • Very impressive, PC. How would I use it? {{subst:Chembox transcluded}} in the article? Wim van Dorst 14:36, 22 October 2005 (UTC).
    • Exactly, but beware! I have not yet had the chance to test it for real, there may still be some bugs... Physchim62 16:37, 22 October 2005 (UTC)
      • Nah. So you still use subst: to get a complicated table, which you then edit laboriously? There's no win in that. So it's only for changes afterwards? Small win, imho.

The proper implementation for a transcluded chembox would be

 {{chembox Chemname=abc Property1=This Property2=That etc etc}}

and then it is up to wikipedia to make a nice chembox table out of that. But indeed that would need a very complicated programming, I agree to that.

  • I would suggest that it is quite simply impossible to make the chemboxes that way: they are not sufficiently standardised. Not our fault, you understand, I must get on to a passing Supreme Being and ask him/her why chemical compounds have such a range of different properties. Physchim62 17:45, 24 October 2005 (UTC)
      • To get a good idea of how it works, I made a transcluded chembox table for vinyl chloride (much needed) on my talk page. You can see it needs correction in SMILES, and.... R/S phrases (SIC, how could this happen, PC?). For the rest is it quite ok. Wim van Dorst 17:07, 24 October 2005 (UTC).
    • Yes, there is a problem. There are so many new templates that they don't all work together.... I was forced to use subst to get the R/S templates to display properly on the inorganic chemboxes I did yesterday. I can see where the problem is on the SMILES template, but it's going to be a pain to fix it: it will fail for any compound with a double bond! Physchim62 17:45, 24 October 2005 (UTC)


International use of chembox, no subst please...

Hi :-) I have translated chembox to catalan. it's easy to copy, paste and translate if included in articles without subst, like SiO2. If subst is used, the translation work to be done is much higher... ca:Usuari:Joanjoc 13 January 2006

I'm new here. I love this Chemical infobox idea. I changed some pages over to it today. Just to clarify, to support easy translation of the tables, it is best to use Template:Chembox transcluded ? So, the right/recommended syntax is:
{{Chembox/IUPACName|mychemical}}
{{Chembox/OtherNames|?}}
{{Chembox/Formula|?}}
{{Chembox/SMILES|?}}
{{Chembox/MolarMass|?.??}}
{{Chembox/Appearance|?}}
etc.. etc...

I hope that is the recommended method. It is much easier to edit for new users than the very lengthy table syntax. Cheers, Jeff Carr 08:38, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

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