Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Physics#Need more opinions at Wavelength

This interesting stub has been unsourced for 15 years. Can somebody please add reliable sources to this? Thanks in advance. Bearian (talk) 02:07, 30 March 2025 (UTC)

:I applied WP:PROD, this is not a thing. Johnjbarton (talk) 03:33, 30 March 2025 (UTC)

::Definitely not a thing.--ReyHahn (talk) 08:16, 30 March 2025 (UTC)

:::Ok. Bearian (talk) 01:45, 31 March 2025 (UTC)

• There are some articles linking to it, some of those articles should be reviewed or have links redirected to kinetic energy.--ReyHahn (talk) 15:08, 2 April 2025 (UTC)

:The PROD succeeded but I asked that it be restored after @OpenScience709 pointed to a reliable source that, among other things says "We do not usually talk about kinetic and potential energy in quantum field theory. Instead we talk about kinetic terms and then about interactions, ...". So evidently within quantum field theory this is a thing.

:So far I am not convinced that this is a topic that deserves a full page so I have proposed to merge it into Lagrangian (field theory). Johnjbarton (talk) 23:47, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

:: I'm a bit bemused that you are going to that trouble. The term has no clear standalone meaning, and as such there should never have been a page with that title. However, merging it as you propose makes sense. —Quondum 00:01, 7 April 2025 (UTC)

:::Well I don't know enough about QFT to be sure so I wanted to let the process run. Johnjbarton (talk) 01:05, 7 April 2025 (UTC)

:::Yeah it does have standalone meaning as "the set of terms formed from bilinears of fields, usually excluding the mass terms". OpenScience709 (talk) 05:41, 7 April 2025 (UTC)

:::: {{u|OpenScience709}}, "standalone in a niche field", perhaps. Bilinears of fields include all the things that we call energy, stress and momentum, for example. "Usually excluding the mass terms" is useless. It is not a topic that anyone not in that niche field could be expected to recognize. Your definition doesn't even make sense. Your have not provided any sourcing in the face of no-one confirming your claim, which suggests that you might be in WP:SYNTH territory. If the average physicist from any field does not react with "I know exactly that term means", it is not a good candidate as an article title. I suggest that you get some direct support from people in this forum to show that you are not pushing your own conceptions. —Quondum 16:00, 7 April 2025 (UTC)

:::::@Quondum Uhm. A physicits from a certain field will not know "exactly" what each term means in all other areas of physics... They will know their own area, and some general physics. That's about it.

:::::But as for the accusation of WP:SYNTH or "pushing my own conceptions": M.D. Schwartz in Quantum Field Theory and the Standard Model states the following on pages 30-31: "We do not usually talk about kinetic and potential energy in quantum field theory. Instead we talk about kinetic terms and then about interactions, for reasons that will become clear after we have done a few calculations. Kinetic terms are bilinear, meaning they have exactly two fields." "Anything with just two fields of the same or different type can be called a kinetic term. The kinetic terms tell you about the free (non-interacting) behavior. Fields with kinetic terms are said to be dynamical or propagating. More precisely, a field should have time derivatives in its kinetic term to be dynamical. It is also sometimes useful to think of a mass term, such as $m^2\; \backslash phi^2$, as an interaction rather than a kinetic term".

:::::Kinetic terms are mentioned and used in pretty much all QFT textbooks. Anyone who studied QFT would have encountered kinetic terms. Thats not a niche requirement. OpenScience709 (talk) 16:46, 7 April 2025 (UTC)

:::::: QFT is a niche field in WP. Even as far as most physicists are concerned, it could be regarded as niche. Very few physicist that have no insight into QFT would even be able to determine what area of physic was being referred to when "kinetic term" is mentioned. Also that these "are a reasonably wide range of things" violates the guideline WP:NOTDICT: an article is about a specific concept, not a range of things that happen to share a name. Anyhow, we have established that you consider the term to be specific to QFT. It strikes me that authors (including Schwartz) will use terms like this and define these as they go for use in their text; this does not make these terms into candidates for standalone definitions in WP. Even your quotations are fuzzy: characterizations, not definitions. It seems from your quotes that what is being gotten at is the decomposition of a bilinear expression into so-called kinetic and interaction summands. This decomposition would appear to be for convenience in a text or discussion; I would also guess that this decomposition cannot be done canonically. If this decomposition is "a thing", then the title would not be "Kinetic term". —Quondum 17:24, 7 April 2025 (UTC)

:::::::@Quondum Ok then whats your point. There are many, many Wikipedia articles on physics that a physicists couldnt place from the title alone unless they happen to be an expert in that area or one closely related to it.

:::::::Again, kinetic terms are a specific concept. One that is WIDELY used to refer to the exact same class of terms. Schwartz isnt using this ad hoc as you seem to imply. The definition also isn't fuzzy.

:::::::Here is a very incomplete list of textbooks that explicitly use the term "kinetic term" to refer to the exact same type of Langrangian terms:

:::::::* QFT by Peskin and Schroeder (considered the go-to QFT textbook, along with the more recent Schwartz)

:::::::* QFT by Srednicki

:::::::* Classical Field Theory by Nastaste

:::::::* A Modern Introduction to Quantum Field Theory by Maggorie

:::::::* QFT lecture notes by David Tong (basically the go-to lecture notes on QFT)

:::::::The third QFT classic, by Weinberg, doesnt explicitly call them kinetic terms, but thats cause Weinberg is generally notationally clunky and a bit dated (but still excellent content-wise).

:::::::Your claim that "kinetic term" is an ad hoc definition that is ill defined doesn't make much sense from how widely it is used (but not defined since it is standard terminology) in academic papers. Just have a look on arXiv and look for papers with "kinetic term" in them. They are all refering to the exact same thing. 85 of them have it in the title alone (again they refer to the exact same concept). Lets compare that to papers having "kinetic energy" in the title which is 476. So this is SO WIDELY USED that its only 6 times less common than literally kinetic energy. It is a crude measure yes. But it does indicate something. OpenScience709 (talk) 17:48, 7 April 2025 (UTC)

:::::::: I do not find that we are able to communicate in a productive way, so I'll leave you to your own perceptions. I will simply reiterate that editing WP is a collaborative exercise, and hopefully you will seek a consensus. —Quondum 21:13, 7 April 2025 (UTC)

:::::::::Why do you think I’m engaging in this conversation? To build consensus. You say I didn’t provide a source and possibly made things up. I provided a source. You disregard the source saying it’s an ad hoc definition (without evidence; merely your cursory interpretation). I provided a myriad of other sources where the term is used the exact same way. You quit the conversation. If you still think that “kinetic term” is not a real term, what would convenience you? Tell me what type of evidence would you find sufficient? You seem to be moving the goalpost every time I get back to you. OpenScience709 (talk) 07:01, 8 April 2025 (UTC)

::::::::: I have already backed away from direct involvement. In any event, any consensus would involve others. Aside from which, it has not escaped me that my perspective has not generated a peep of support. —Quondum 13:43, 8 April 2025 (UTC)

:@Bearian @ReyHahn @Johnjbarton @Quondum: I have now fully rewritten the article. Any thoughts?

:OpenScience709 (talk) 07:31, 12 April 2025 (UTC)

::This should not be an article, as there are too few separate references to it. It fails WP:SIGCOV. If not deleted, then it should be merged as suggested. I'm sorry that I brought this up. Bearian (talk) 07:36, 12 April 2025 (UTC)

:::@Bearian Wait what? How is it not significant?? What number of references do you consider enough??? The article references 20 separate things already, which is currently a lot more than most physics articles (eg Lagrangian (field theory) which you are suggesting merging into has 9), so I don't think you can make that statement. Please explain to me how the references I provided are not significant. OpenScience709 (talk) 09:00, 12 April 2025 (UTC)

::::Again, regrets. I'll let others decide. Bearian (talk) 09:03, 12 April 2025 (UTC)

:::::Wait sorry I may misunderstand what you mean. Are you currently in favour of the merge or are you saying you regret that you suggested the merge beforehand and now are of the position that the article should be kept up? I'm confused. OpenScience709 (talk) 09:18, 12 April 2025 (UTC)

::::::I still skeptic that kinetic term is specific in any sense. It is just used when you have a Lagrangian/Hamiltonian or some equivalent action principle with something that looks like the kinetic energy. I can see why when dealing with field theories it's called that, but it could be called that for more abstract theories (look for example in Google Books "kinetic term -fields -particles" and you will find plenty of uses in biology and chemistry).--ReyHahn (talk) 09:30, 12 April 2025 (UTC)

:::::::@ReyHahn But it is used in a specific sense as I have demonstrated with the myriad of sources I provided. Schwartz explicitly makes this clear (see the aforementioned quote mentioned by @Johnjbarton, which is verbatim fromm Schwartz). They are all refering exactly to the same specific type of term. Which is a distinct, although related, concept from the kinetic energy. The point is that in field theories, that is what such terms are called. Whether the term is used elsewhere isnt relevant for the kinetic term being a specific, well established, thing. OpenScience709 (talk) 09:34, 12 April 2025 (UTC)

:::::::Yeah sure, some books in other fields do use "kinetic term" to refer to some particlar term in an equation that happens to be kinetic in some sense. But here "kinetic term" isn't a distinct well defined object as it is in field theory. Another minoer point of evidence is that kinetic term literally appears in the Index of Schawrt's textbook, which would make no sense if it was merely an ad hoc reference to some term in an equation rather than a distinct concept. OpenScience709 (talk) 09:37, 12 April 2025 (UTC)

:::::::Another minor point is that "kinetic term" is used when no kinetic energy even exists, such as in Euclidean field theories! And that's because it is defined to mean bilinear terms with derivatives in a Lagrangian, not the term that is related to kinetic energy (eg random paper example: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2405.02072). OpenScience709 (talk) 09:56, 12 April 2025 (UTC)

Delete: Maybe put it up for deletion. I'd vote to delete. I notice that OpenScience709 has exploded this article by filling it with an ocean of conventional Lagrangians found in QFT. I think this is just POV-pushing and outright OR. Embarrassing, even. Yes, of course, the word-pair "kinetic term" appears in QFT texts. The usage is always informal. It is a hand-waving attempt to say "think of all the places where this could reduce to classical kinetic energy" and, yes, it is useful to fuzz one's eyes and imagine this to be the case. But it is misleading and imprecise. If you want to say "propagators are just the fredholm alternative for a kinetic term", well, just say it in the article on propagators. Likewise, if you want to talk about Hamiltonians vs Lagrangians, there are articles for this, already. Don't create a bunch of original research and fiddle faddle to vociferously defend a linguistic turn that is inherently imprecise and is used to communicate the flavor of some fraction of a complicated equation. It is not a precise term. Don't pretend it is. 67.198.37.16 (talk) 21:56, 25 April 2025 (UTC)

:Lolwat. Ok so lets take this point by point:

:1. Original research accusation: Can you point me to what is original research? Nothing I provided was unsourced nor are there any conclusions I made that are not already made by the cited research.

:2. "ocean of conventional Lagrangians": You mean me giving a handful (5 to be specific) of relevant kinetic terms? Specifically those that are referred to (check the citations I provide if you do not believe me), canonical kinetic terms for particles of different spins in four dimensions.

:3. "The usage is always informal". No its not. Again, I provided a myriad of citations.

:4. "think of all the places where this could reduce to classical kinetic energy": Again no. For example in Euclidean spacetime, kinetic terms don't really give you kinetic energy since you have no temporal dimension. Similarly, gradient terms belong to kinetic terms yet have nothing really to do with kinetic energy.

:5. "This is misleading and imprecise": Yes, your own misleading and imprecise definition you just made up is misleading and imprecise. I on the other hand provide a precise definition supported by citations.

:6. I don't understand your remaining points...

:7. To summarize. It is a precise term. You have to address the citations I provided to show that it is not the case.

:OpenScience709 (talk) 20:57, 27 April 2025 (UTC)

I was recently called out by an user for writing equations using a colon as ":$E=mc^2$" as in

:$E=mc^2$,

however the suggested method per MOS:INDENT and WP:FORMULA is to write in as "$$E=mc^2$$" no colon, as in

$$E=mc^2$$,

which includes two additional line breaks. I have issues with the recommended case because it sometimes throws the comma outside the equation into a new line (depending on the app), it gives trouble with the visual editor and the spacing is inconsistent (for example in mobile it is not indented). What's the best practice here? I am told that the colon version breaks html codes but I have never seen that issue. Also the colon version is used almost everywhere. Should I raise this issue to WP:MOS?--ReyHahn (talk) 08:11, 7 April 2025 (UTC)

:Please do. I'm definitely not going to start writing "$$E=mc^2$$". It ruins both punctuation and alignment, and moreover is more inconvenient to type than ":$E=mc^2$". Tercer (talk) 09:53, 7 April 2025 (UTC)

:: I too have once been "called out" once about this a while back. I see that it is mentioned as producing "invalid HTML" at MOS:MATH#Using_LaTeX_markup, but it is used extensively without any drive to reformat all pages that use it. $$$$ has its own problems (irksome line spacing, as well as browser-dependent line breaking before and after it, e.g., on Brave, it simply merges inline with the adjacent lines). Looking at MOS:INDENTGAP, it is the colon's use for indentation generally that is the problem, unrelated to line content, so to make any sense, one would have to eliminate colon indentation everywhere. In any event, if it produces broken markup, this should be fixed by the wiki processing, not by arcane rules for workarounds of problems. Apologies for the rant, but AFAICT the case against moving away from colon-indentation of LaTeX is pretty solid. —Quondum 16:36, 7 April 2025 (UTC)

:Our pages should adopt the same approach used in the rest of Wikipedia.

:This week the display block feature has been altered by a software change in MediaWiki. So any examples or comparisons done since last Thursday should be disregarded. Johnjbarton (talk) 18:15, 7 April 2025 (UTC)

::Do you have a link?--ReyHahn (talk) 09:38, 8 April 2025 (UTC)

:::[https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T201233 Link] given on WT:Wikiproject Mathematics.

:::The change that caused this was reported to have been reverted on Monday. Sadly the issue is bound up in other problems. The development team is pushing for a new rendering engine called MathML but the feedback from editors on WT:Wikiproject Mathematics is that this new system is inadequate. So in this case the development team seemed reluctant to revert until multiple complaints showed up. Oh, and the test driver also broken, which is why the buggy version was released.

:::So decisions about "colon indent" vs "display block" are probably premature. When MathML lands the indent choice may be different. But then again the MathML effort has been long running... Johnjbarton (talk) 15:28, 8 April 2025 (UTC)

::::Thanks for clarifying. Let us wait then. If there are any news, please consider leaving a comment here.--ReyHahn (talk) 17:54, 8 April 2025 (UTC)

:I have used display block hundreds of times with no problem. I rarely see colon indents.

:Your example above is mis-formatted: the comma belongs with the formula like this:

:$$E=mc^2,$$

:So it renders inside the block like

:$$E=mc^2,$$

:this. Johnjbarton (talk) 15:33, 8 April 2025 (UTC)

::I see mostly colon indents, but maybe there are efforts to change it all over the place. I see how the comma inside can solve the issue, but I would have preferred it outside the equation in some cases. Also you still used a colon.--ReyHahn (talk) 17:54, 8 April 2025 (UTC)

:::If you see a case where a comma outside of a display block is needed, please post it.

:::The Talk page "Reply" feature adds indents so that my equation appears within my reply.

:::I guess we should be looking at our pages via mobile view/devices as more than half of the page views are mobile. Johnjbarton (talk) 19:59, 8 April 2025 (UTC)

:::: The non-wrap problem that I mention (that was forcing the editor to insert a blank line before and after) has indeed been fixed, restoring the normal behaviour. One place where $$$$ is very useful is for an indented equation inside a bulleted or numbered list item, for example (which otherwise would need {{tlc|br}} or a ghastly * – *: – : sequence, which produces broken list HTML and does not work used for numbered lists). {{u|ReyHahn}}, if you want to have the comma outside when using the colon, one has to suppress wrapping on narrow screens, for example by using {{tlc|nowrap}} or {{tlc|tmath}}. —Quondum 20:18, 8 April 2025 (UTC)

File:Information.svg There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Antenna (radio)#Requested move 5 April 2025 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. TarnishedPath^talk 01:04, 13 April 2025 (UTC)

There is a relatively new page Glauber multiple scattering theory created by Peterjol. It needs a bit of TLC with additional sources, but beyond that I am not certain whether this is not already in other pages, or should be merged to some existing page. Thoughts? Ldm1954 (talk) 09:06, 13 April 2025 (UTC)

:I suggested on the Talk page that the appropriate article would be "Glauber approximation" with an Applications section on multiple scattering or maybe a section "Multiple scattering". Discussing the multiple scattering form entails the basic form AFAIK. Johnjbarton (talk) 19:32, 14 April 2025 (UTC)

A page Holomovement has been recently created by @Skyerise overriding a 2021 redirect created by @Firefly to a different discussion of some of David Bohm's ideas. The page has already been tagged by @Onel5969 for notability and primary sources. I am raising it here for discussion as to:

1. Leave and improve.
2. Restore the redirect, or to one of the other pages on David Bohm's philosophy such as Holonomic brain theory.
3. Jump to AfD.

Comments please Ldm1954 (talk) 11:35, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

:{{yo|Ldm1954}} It's notable and deserves an article. I didn't restore content. I wrote a completely new article. The concept is used outside of physics. If you think the topic is non-notable, start an AfD, this isn't going to be decided here. Skyerise (talk) 12:19, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

::My first pass on this page? That both @Ldm1954 and @Skyerise ought to be aware that this comes close to Contentious topics/Pseudoscience and fringe science and I'm tempted to leave {{tl|alert/first}} on both editor's talk pages. Done. WP:BLAR is the controlling policy for the aforementioned page history as descibed by Ldm1954 and if it is disputed then AfD is the correct procedure. To the page itself, my preliminary assessment of the page and it's sources and "Further reading" seciton suggest that it would appear that the topic does meet notability; but also that the article focuses on primary or "in-universe" (for lack of a better word) citations and would benefit from secondary critical analysis and less Wikivoice. Bobby Cohn (talk) 14:04, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

:::So I'm looking at this and what I'm seeing is an amateur attempt at a materialist metaphysics. Now I happen to like reading materialist metaphysics (ex: Difference and Repetition, the more metaphysical plateaus of A Thousand Plateaus and some of the more materialist-inclined of the speculative realists) and what I'm seeing here is a perfect example of the problem of amateur metaphysics such as attempting to build a 1:1 correlation between a metaphysical substrate and the construction of the mind. This is kind of skipping a whole bunch of intermediate steps and is a common problem when physicists stumble, untrained, into philosophy (or, worse, psychology). I think based on what I'm seeing in this article that there isn't enough to support an independent article. Frankly it's evident from the article that Bohm was a non-expert at philosophy. This should be redirected to David Bohm. Simonm223 (talk) 14:48, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

Comment As he states about, Skyerise is arguing that the page is notable and has removed the notability tag added by Onel5969 and removed it twice after I restored it. Since the question of what form the pilot wave theory and similar should be described has, to my knowledge, been discussed here before (not without controversy), comments here are appropriate. Or you can add to Talk:Holomovement or just edit of course. WP:NPOV and WP:5P please. Ldm1954 (talk) 13:28, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

:Notable, but I think it should be merged with Implicate and explicate order. Notable but pointless. And not physics. Johnjbarton (talk) 17:15, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

::For reference, the merge proposal is being discussed on the article talk page. Ldm1954 (talk) 13:54, 17 April 2025 (UTC)

Anyone want to rescue Isochoric process, or just PROD/AfD/Redirect? It had one non-RS which I removed, what is there is more a high-school essay than a proper article. Ldm1954 (talk) 12:43, 27 April 2025 (UTC)

: {{slink|Thermodynamics#States_and_processes}} lists a series of "processes", each defined by keeping a different parameter constant, so it would seem to be appropriate to deal with them all in a consistent manner. Each of these seems to qualify as a subsection of Thermodynamics, and could legitimately be broken out into a subpage. While the content of Isochoric process is not of high quality, and it is unsourced, its current content is not directly problematic and it can in principle be rewritten and sourced, so I do not see a case for deletion. Note also that it is extensively linked to. I would suggest simply tagging it as unsourced, without requiring it to be "rescued" to avoid deletion. —Quondum 13:14, 27 April 2025 (UTC)

:Some reliable sources supplied.Chjoaygame (talk) 06:23, 28 April 2025 (UTC)

I just found this article: Bloch lines. The article was generated with a large language model (LLM) like chatGPT. This is indicated by a template which means that this practice is already so common that we have a template. It is laziness at its best. The article barely cites anything inline and has references that may contain information on it, gathered by a simple Google search (the article originally had fake references). I do not know what to think of this, it barely define what it is, it makes me sad.ReyHahn (talk) 09:20, 3 May 2025 (UTC)

:Revert it, warn the user that added the wall of crap.

:WP:UPSD will make some LLM stuff easier to detect, btw. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 10:56, 3 May 2025 (UTC)

Should we merge the salvageable parts into domain wall (magnetism)? Also this avoid LLM-creating an article for Néel line.--ReyHahn (talk) 09:47, 3 May 2025 (UTC)