Talk:Vapour pressure of water
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Spelled vapour in the article title, can we fix this????? change it to the american spelling "vapor"
- Please see Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style#National_varieties_of_English. SWAdair 06:17, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Categorization
Why is this categorized under "Chemical properties". I don't see any chemistry here. Shouldn't this rather be in a subcategory of "Physics", say "Thermodynamics"? Philip Trueman 14:43, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
Philip, you raise a good point. It would seem that such a thing might be better categorized under physics or thermodynamics. However, the vapor pressure of water, and partial pressures of gases in general, has long been a topic of physical chemistry. So, I'd say it's properly categorized. For example, the combined gas law (PV=nRT) comes from chemistry, not physics. The vapor pressure of water at various temperatures is frequently used in chemistry when performing gas-phase chemical reactions.
But, what bothers me about this entry is that there is not a single reference to an acceptable scientific source for the numbers. Sure, there is a reference to a High School text book. Also, the table seems a bit incomplete. One would like the similar numbers in different units, say mmHg (ie: Torr), atm. Both these units are more common in the chemistry laboratory than are Pascal (which are more likely used in a physics lab).
I'd like to see external references to other sources of physical chemistry, like a textbook (e.g.: any of Atkins' books on physical chemistry), a good reference manual (e.g.: CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics), and a scientific paper from a refereed journal (e.g.: something relevant from J. Phys. Chem.) Such referencing can buttruss the information in such a scientific entry and help to dispell the notion that Wikipedia is not a reference to be used for "scientific" information. Patrick 02:45, 9 October 2007 (UTC)