Talk:Halogen

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

	Chemistry Portal This article is supported by the Elements WikiProject, which gives a central approach to the chemical elements on Wikipedia. Please participate by editing this article, or visit the project page for more details. This article has also been selected for the Version 0.5 release of Wikipedia.
Start	This article has been rated as Start-Class on the quality scale.
High	This article has been rated as High-importance on the importance scale.
Article Grading: The article has been rated for quality and/or importance but has no comments yet. If appropriate, please review the article and then leave comments here to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the article and what work it will need.

Contents 1 Halogens 2 Proposed removal of illustration 3 Ugly 4 In existence? 5 Major reversion

[edit] Halogens

just to note that the halogens are not group 17 but in fact group 7 elements. the transition metals in the periodic table are not given group names but are just a block of elements

IUPAC group numbers are used. Femto 18:52, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Halogens are cool —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 82.38.192.243 (talk • contribs) .

Yeahq but which one's the coolest? —Keenan Pepper 02:22, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Proposed removal of illustration

If nobody objects, I'm going to remove the image from this article. I really can't see how having those coloured blobs at the top of the page is going to help anyone understand the article. They aren't even labelled, so readers are just left to guess which is which. -- Sakurambo 桜ん坊 23:31, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Ugly

Could this page get any uglier? A figure to the left, a table to the right, another two to the bottom. All squashing the main text into a strange, central region. It's horrible. Suggestions? --Plumbago 15:54, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

I agree, it's ugly. I moved things around and added section breaks. I think it looks better, but it could still use some work. I don't know what to do with the "Explanation of above periodic table slice:" thingy. --Ed (Edgar181) 16:25, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Nice work. It's much better. I agree about the "explanation" table. It's much bigger than the table it describes. Perhaps the periodic table slices need an "explanation" tab at the base which links to a seperate page? That's not ideal either, but might make more sense. Regarding said "explanation" table - it appears to contain an error. Elements are described being as either "naturally radioactive" or "radioactive, synthetic" elements. The former should really be "radioactive, natural" n'es pas? Cheers, --Plumbago 16:47, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] In existence?

Why is Fluorine said to be the most reactive element in existence? Can we really be certain there isn't another element yet to be discovered that is more reactive than fluorine? 82.18.181.78 22:34, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

We should change it to "Flourine is the most reactive chemical in existence known to man" Chuck61007 22:36, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Major reversion

I reverted the article to the last version by 8thstar [1]. This was because that's the most recent version that is more or less factually accurate. Some of the recent changes were blatantly inaccurate, to put it mildly. First, halogens are not "radioactive in their natural states as diatomic molecules", with the exception of astatine. The book that was used to justify that point certainly does not say that. Second, the contribution of d-orbitals to bonding in hypervalent compounds is at the very least disputed, if not widely discredited. A textbook from 1975 is not a good reference to back this statement. See the references in the article about hypervalency; one author talks of "the nearly unanimous conclusions of theoretical studies that the octet rule is a valid first approximation for the entire main block and that it is the traditional Lewis 2c-2e model of covalent bonding that requires modification" (Jensen, 2006). --Itub 12:29, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Also, i removed the "When under standard conditions" barf; that suggests that when they are *not* under standard conditions, they are as halides. Pressure, etc have nothing to do with their existance as diatomic molecules because they're so reactive that even under them, they'd just not really be found. J O R D A N ^[talk ] 18:05, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

I wrote under standard conditions (what does barf mean?) to replace the phrase in their natural form which is ambiguous. Yes, halogens are not found in their elemental (diatomic) form in the environment. But they are not always found as halide ions - iodine, for instance, commonly exists in nature as iodate, IO₃⁻. I feel the introduction to this article should be tightened. There is quite a lot of rambling - it should be more consise.

Ben 20:10, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Firstly, i apologise for the use of "barf", it was supposed to be b0rf as a friendly gesture.

What i meant by it was that even though you're right, it made it sound that if halides were placed under standard conditions, there would be a yield of halogens; reactions occuring under standard condtions are, from my experience with their use, a "buffer" in that they allow comparable data sets where similar reactions are semi-ensured, and to use the context of standard conditions makes it sound that they only occur under standard conditions and despite being correct to some extent, makes it sound more ambiguous than needed.

I think the introduction as it is (current revision) is horrendous, and i'd prefer a more concise introduction. If we could come to a compromise, i'd be happy. J O R D A N ^[talk ] 09:43, 19 March 2007 (UTC)