User talk:Tomasz Prochownik

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Welcome...

Hello, Tomasz Prochownik, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful:

Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or place {{helpme}} on your talk page and ask your question there. Again, welcome! Abbott75 ☺ 05:39, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Heron's turbine?

Well, Tomasz, it depends on how you define a turbine, doesn't it. Would you call a rotary crop-sprayer a turbine? Heron's affair worked the same way, except for the steam jets spraying tangentially. Taqi al Din's and della Porta's device played the jet in a fixed direction on rotary blades, so it comes closer to a turbine except that it had no casing to concentrate the flow and must have wasted an awful lot of steam around the sides. Anyway you've stimulated me to clarify. ThanksJohn of Paris 07:59, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

Tomasz Prochownik 07:35, 27 July 2007 (UTC)It appears u have forced my hand here. I personnaly dont think that any these early devices really classify as turbines since one defintion for steam turbine is "A device for converting energy of high-pressure steam (produced in a boiler) into mechanical power which can then be used to generate electricity" But since you have decided to list tariq machine as a stream turbine, a very rudimentary one at best, then Heron's would aslo qualify by the definition of simple steam turbine being "A steam turbine extracts the energy of pressurized superheated steam as mechanical movement". or " turbine in which steam strikes blades and makes them turn." Either way Heron's machine satisfies these definition of a steam turbine. Lastly i list Herons machine as a turbine because other encyclopedias, ie Britannica, have listed it as a turbine, not to mention there are alot of books that list it as one as well. Tomasz Prochownik 07:35, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
Tomasz Prochownik 07:48, 27 July 2007 (UTC)So i have decided to change the steam turbine page back to what it was not only because Heron's machine does qualify as a turbine by the very def.'s given for turbines. but because i have made some changes again i have decided to list more refernces stating that Heron's machine is a the first steam turbine. There are other countless credible websites and books that list Heron's machine as an early turbine, i just havent listed them all because it would take up large amounts of space, but that just reinforces my opinion. Please take the time to look over my sources. I guess what am sayin is that ur gonna need more then one source to back up ur claim, and credible ones. Pleas respond when u have the time. I find this topin really interesting, and i wanna have more details about ur opinion on the subject.Tomasz Prochownik 07:48, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, only just found your latest post. Ah, the weight of Authority... Well the first thing as to sources, I can only quote Richard Dawkins here: "Science doesn't work by vote and it doesn't work by authority". For me what this implies at the very least is the necessity of exercising critical judgement in choosing your sources, which gives me a problem with WP NPOV and NPR, because if you can't find satisfactory recent sources (or only "quotes - of quotes - of quotes...), you have to try and dig up the original (usually only one), which is time-consuming research or as I did for the Newcomen engine, go and spend a whole day watching the Black Country Museum replica at work, taking photos and talking to the guy who designed it and the guy who was working it. I came back with bits of crucial information I had never found in any publication dating from over the last 200 years (except David Hulse's booklet), because to build the replica they they had to go as far as possible to the original sources. So as you see mine is not a neutral approach and entails some personal research or at least personal investigation, but anyone can contact the museum and check my facts, so in a way I have given my source of information (and only one in plethora of others) and what is more, put a report on a couple of WP talk pages. If WP is meant only as a collection of library scrapings, exluding all personal initiative, then I think I will out. As for the turbine question, haven't you noticed that for a turbine to work you nornally direct a jet from a fixed nozzle onto blades mounted around the circumference of a moveable wheel or axis, preferable surrounded by a casing? These could perhaps be criteria for a definition of the word "turbine" (perhaps better than the one you give) in which case the eolipyle would not qualify; well I suppose you could still call it a rotary reaction device, but it had no practical use as far as anyone can see except to demonstrate a principle - not bad already. The other problem is that the original source information on it is very vague and no original drawing exists. All the drawings of the eolipyle we are now familiar with were done much later. So we have to keep a balanced view of it.--John of Paris 10:58, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] A note about linking

Thank you for your contributions to Wikipedia. In your recent edit to History of the battery‎, you added links to an article which did not add content or meaning, or repeated the same link several times throughout the article. Please see Wikipedia's guideline on links to avoid overlinking. Thank you. Accurizer (talk) 04:20, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Your recent edits

Hi there. In case you didn't know, when you add content to talk pages and Wikipedia pages that have open discussion, you should sign your posts by typing four tildes ( ~~~~ ) at the end of your comment. On many keyboards, the tilde is entered by holding the Shift key, and pressing the key with the tilde pictured. You may also click on the signature button Image:Signature_icon.png located above the edit window. This will automatically insert a signature with your name and the time you posted the comment. This information is useful because other editors will be able to tell who said what, and when. Thank you! --SineBot (talk) 08:04, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

The same applies when you delete content. Please make proposals on talk pages first rather than blanking paragraphs, remember to fill in an edit summary, and remember to sign your posts. .. dave souza, talk 08:32, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Project History of Science

Tomasz,

I notice that you've been working to clean up extravagant claims of precursors of modern ideas in some articles related to the History of Science. You might want to become a member of Project History of Science. The people there are generally helpful and can provide some ideas about what a good article in the History of Science should look like. Thanks for your efforts.

--SteveMcCluskey (talk) 02:36, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Optics

Please see the discussion at Talk:Optics#Branch of physics?.--Srleffler (talk) 03:47, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

[In reply to your comment on my talk page]:

Check back there. I wrote a reply. It takes time to write something thoughtful! I moved the discussion because changes to the text of an article are best discussed on that article's talk page, not on user talk pages. That way multiple editors can more easily participate and other editors with an interest in the subject can join in.
It wasn't about "settling the dispute", it was about starting a conversation.
By the way, when you post on talk pages (but not in articles), you need to sign your comment, so people know who wrote what. You do that by putting four tilde characters ("~~~~") in a row at the end of your post. When you save the page, the software automatically converts this into your username and the time. --Srleffler (talk) 04:04, 9 April 2008 (UTC)