Talk:Goldschmidt classification

Siderophile candidates

Tungsten(W)

If you google for "siderophile tungsten" you get a lot of results. Also, my "Encyclopedia of the Solar System, Second Edition" by McFadden et al. 2006. I think it should be moved or, at least, explained why it's not siderophile. Does it have to do with pressure (siderophile in a planet core, not in the lab)?--Zimriel (talk) 20:32, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

Tungsten is now in the siderophile list, with a source added, as of December 2015. Cheers. N2e (talk) 18:07, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

Housekeeping

gly4200 link missing

This link http://www.geology.fau.edu/course_info/fall02/gly4200/Abundance.htm results in a file not found error (404) right now. If this turns out permanent the link should be removed. 84.160.246.75 17:15, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

I removed it, since it's still 404 almost four months later. I added the "Periodic Table" category, though some other category might be more appropriate becuse this classification is ifferen than any periodic table-based classifiations. -- Mikeblas 00:24, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

That page is available archived: http://web.archive.org/web/20030822005140/http://www.geology.fau.edu/course_info/fall02/gly4200/Abundance.htm Sorry — don't have time to track down where page was cited originally and see if citation would still be useful. —Blanchette (talk) 21:45, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

Terminology

While a bit of googling revealed that the provided explanations for the terms "lithophile", "siderophile" etc. ("Lithophile means 'silicate loving'.") are widespread, they seem pretty questionable to me from an etymological point of view. (for instance, I'm fairly positive "lithophile" should be literally translated as "rock loving") In that context, using a term like "means", implying a literal translation, is rather misleading. If that explanation is indeed frequently provided by scientific literature, I think it would be better to point it out as a commonly held misconception or handwave explanation. Anybody who can claim particular expertise in the field willing to look into it? (If nothing happens for a while, I -might- attempt boldly doing so myself, but...) --4bpp (talk) 11:48, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

The etymology of "chalcophile" doesn't lead back to "sulfur-loving". The Greek word from which we get the "chalc" meant "ore", and also meant "bronze", as well as meaning "copper". In the case of Goldschmidt's "chalcophile", the "ore" meaning is the one intended; most ores are either oxides or chalcogenides (which mostly means sulfides, since sulfur is so much more abundant than selenium or tellurium or polonium, and polonium doesn't even have any stable isotopes). Also: the atmophilic elements are also called the volatile elements. Volatile substances are those that occur as either gases or liquids in conditions ambient on the surface. Atmophilic (volatile) elements are either volatile noble gases or occur in volatile compounds. Eldin raigmore (talk) 16:38, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

I changed the definitions and etymologies of all four groups. In some cases this meant revising the first and/or second sentence; in some cases it meant adding a new first sentence. I also changed the discussion of hydrogen and water in the last paragraph of the "atmophile" section. Eldin raigmore (talk) 17:12, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

I don't have a source handy, but I am almost certain that, contrary to the claim that none of nitrogen's oxides are stable with respect to nitrogen and oxygen, aqueous nitrate is in fact the thermodynamically preferred state given redox conditions at the earth's surface, and only through biological processes (denitrification and photosynthesis) are the elemental gases maintained in the atmosphere. Withlyn (talk) 02:50, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

The last paragraph of the Chalcophile elements section should be heavily revised or deleted: these elements DO NOT constitute the bulk of commercially important metals (just think Fe, Al and Cr for example) and even if they did the reason given regarding the energy intensive purification methods is a non sequitur.

From a historical perspective I would concede the point when it comes to Cu however where clearly the ease of purification with charcoal, along with the relative abundance and ease of identification of its green (and some blue) mineral sources led to its prominence in human cultural evolution i.e. the bronze age — Preceding unsigned comment added by 110.33.214.194 (talk) 16:25, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

Radium, Actinium, Protactinium, Francium

Base on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abundances_of_the_elements_(data_page) :

- Ra, Ac and Pa are all more abundant than Rn and Po. However this article list these 3 as "very rare" and Po, Rn not. Why?

- Base on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astatine At has only ~28 g on Earth => much less than Ac, Pa, Ra, still included

- For Tc, Pm, Fr, Np, Pu: Francium 20 - 30 g, Promethium at least ~572 g (Occurence section). Tc, Pu, Np not yet found number.

Phanthanhtom (talk) 12:04, 28 September 2012 (UTC)

I agree those elements should also be colored. The very rare category should be removed altogether. Maybe it could be renamed to "below detection limit" and only used for those elements that really can't be detected in the crust. Even Tc99 occurs as a trace element and should have a color. --Tobias1984 (talk) 21:02, 28 September 2012 (UTC)

For most of these elements, this really does a disservice to our readers. They don't live long enough to form minerals and practically only occur with their parents (even Rn doesn't usually have much time to diffuse away).

Having said that, I suppose Pu and Cm are long-lived enough to have had an actual geochemistry when the Earth was young, though they are long gone. But their Goldschmidt classification would've been fairly obvious. Double sharp (talk) 23:17, 17 May 2023 (UTC)

Biophile is missing

The list on page 659 of Goldschmidt (1937) has five categories: siderophile, chalcophile, lithophile, atmophile, and biophile. This entry ignores biophile. In doing so, it follows the practice of most geochemists, but if this is an article about Goldschmidt's classification, the article should be complete.198.137.20.82 (talk) 13:17, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

I agree in principle with the logic of your statement. But Wikipedia is based on verifiable sources. So if you have a source, please add it to the article, along with a statement you believe the source supports. N2e (talk) 18:10, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

Text lines are way too long to be readable

This page has very long text lines that can't be wrapped to a shorter more readable width because of the large, very wide table. Isn't there a way the table could be made much smaller, with an option to pop it up full sized? The table is very nice with useful info, but it shouldn't dominate the page the way it does now. - Dough34 (talk) 16:53, 15 May 2016 (UTC)

Silver and germanium: Both siderophile and chalcophile?

The table's color coding denotes silver and germanium as chalcophiles but silver and germanium appear in the section on siderophiles as well as in the section on chalcophiles—if not wrong at least confusing for readers without explanation.

Iron is a siderophile?

The article's definition of siderophile:

Siderophile (from sideron, "iron", and philia, "love") elements are the high-density transition metals which tend to sink into the core because they dissolve readily in iron

The article goes on to list iron as a siderophile. It seems silly (and perhaps even wrong) to effectively state that iron can dissolve in itself. 71.219.211.90 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 13:06, 22 June 2017 (UTC)