Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Geeforce

This page is an archive of the proposed deletion of the article below. Further comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or on a Votes for Undeletion nomination). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result of the debate was Keep/merge Jtkiefer ^{T | @ | C} ----- 01:15, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Geeforce

This article mostly overlaps with the better-written articles gee and fictitious force. One area where it does not overlap is a weak explanation of "what Einstein said", a topic that is better treated in the articles about gravitation equivalence principle. Note also this article has already been reverted a few times, and had a bogus anonymous VfD tag stuck on it in the past. linas 14:34, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

• Delete, of course. linas 14:34, 9 September 2005 (UTC)
• merge/redirect to gee. — brighterorange (talk) 16:11, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

I just discovered fictitious force, that's a better merge target. linas 05:25, 10 September 2005 (UTC)

• Redirect — Laura Scudder | Talk 23:02, 9 September 2005 (UTC)
• Keep first half; merge second half into gee. The first half of this article is about a separate topic from gee, and a merge would be inappropriate. The gee article is about a unit of acceleration; one gee is a certain amount of acceleration. The geeforce article is about a type of force; geeforces are something which cause acceleration. Geeforces could be measured in gees, but they are separate topics. As a physics major, I'd like to emphasize that this type of distinction is very important. Also, the geeforce article claims that it is dealing specifically with acceleration that isn't caused by gravity, but which appears gravity-like; thus, it would be appropriate to have a separate article on this, rather than merging with the gravity or gravitation articles. All of these topics are related, but distinct. I'd be happy to discuss this further on my talk page -- Creidieki 04:18, 10 September 2005 (UTC)

The right place to have this discussion is here, and not on your talk page. However, after reviewing the other articles more carefully, I agree with you, you are right, this is a distinct topic. I was wrong about the redirect; the redirect should not be to gee but to fictitious force, and all of this article should be merged with fictitious force, and then redirected to it. linas 04:51, 10 September 2005 (UTC)

Not to be snippy, but if this article had been categorized correctly in the first place, under Category:Force and Category:Introductory physics, instead of sticking out like a sore thumb in Category:Physics, it might not have attracted the AfD tag. linas 05:03, 10 September 2005 (UTC)

• Merge and redirect as per above. Karol 11:18, September 10, 2005 (UTC)

• don't merge. "gee" and geeforce ought to be separate. Technically the g/gee ought to be lower case to distinguish it from G/Gee, the gravitational constant, but I think it might be a technical limitation of Wiki that we can't fix that.

The "ficticious forces" label is archaic - it was a categorisation used by people teachng Newtonian theory who wanted to argue that forces due to acceleration that didn't fit the theory could be ignored, because they weren't "physical". This was not a very scientfic argument, and was roundly rejected by many people including Ernst Mach. Einstein's general theory of relativity implemented these forces as fully physical effects, and the term "ficticious" has generally been considered wrong for the last ~ninety years. I'm sure that they still teach "ficticious forces" in schools, but then again, when I was at school, they still taught "Newton's seven colours", introductory physics textbooks have a tendency to contain a lot of discredited "fossil physics". I think that the existing ficticious forces page does a good job of warning anyone who looks for the term that its a bad old historical thing that should be avoided:

" Within physics, there is no obvious use for the term "fictional", or even any precise definition. It is not clear that this characterisation is particularly useful, and many deny that forces are "fictitious" or "imaginary" in any real sense. "

So: "geeforces" should not be merged into the ficticious forces page, they refer to particular physical effects independently of theoretical interpretation. The ficticious forces page might be merged into geeforces, but since "ff" is a term that we are trying to exterminate, perhaps keeping it on its own little isolated page with links out might be the correct thing to do. "ff" might be merged into a different page (such as Coriolis force) , but again, since its a term we probably shouldn't be using, it would be a shame to contaiminate a perfectly nice page like Coriolis force with a paragraph about a dead term that we aren't supposed to use any more. Better to keep "ff" in isolation, I think, and let it wither and die.ErkDemon 13:55, 10 September 2005 (UTC)

• Merge second half and improve first half, as per Creidieki's suggestions. Two more comments: First, Erk, I see that Linas has also noticed, as I have, that you have a marked tendency toward miscategorization. I ask again that you try to be more thoughtful in future. Second, I see that you said that physics teachers have tradionally counseled students to ignore Coriolis forces. That is not true (unless they are neglible in some situation); rather, traditional physics education warns students that these "forces" are treated differently in Newtonian theory, and also in general relativity! So you also got that wrong.---CH (talk) 17:52, 11 September 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 an undeletion request). No further edits should be made to this page.