Talk:James Clerk Maxwell/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: Adam Cuerden (talk · contribs) 20:29, 16 August 2013 (UTC)

This article should be fairly fun to review, though I'm not sure I'll get through all of it tonight. Certainly tomorrow, though. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 20:29, 16 August 2013 (UTC)

Sorry about the delay. I was operating on minimal sleep for a few days. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 15:58, 24 August 2013 (UTC)

No problem. James^x12345 14:14, 25 August 2013 (UTC)

Lead

• Opening paragraph is a little clunky; in particular, it doesn't flow very well, and I suspect one can explain electromagnetism far more simply han that - I've understood it since I was 10 years old or so, mind you, my father's an electrical engineer. This isn't a blocker for GA, but is worth looking at before FA.
• "his foundational work on the rigidity of rod-and-joint frameworks (trusses) like those in many bridges." - rigidity is, of course, a fundamental property. You mean something like "analysing the rigidity".
  • More fundamentally, his work on rigidity is not mentioned outside the lead, making this uncited.

Early life, 1831–39

• The section beginning "His father was a man of comfortable means..." to the end of that paragraph is ambiguously cited. In particular, here's a long section after the last cite.

Education, 1839–47

• "...rediscovering the regular polyhedron before he received any formal instruction..." - I presume you mean "polyhedra", the plural?
• "but Maxwell was deemed too young for the work presented" as the next section makes clear, this should read "but Maxwell was deemed to young to present the work himself." - as it stands, the phrasing's natural reading is that people did not believe Maxwell wrote the work himself, due to being too young.

Edinburgh University, 1847–50

• "Having had the opportunity to attend the University of Cambridge after his first term Maxwell instead decided to complete the full course of his undergraduate studies at Edinburgh." - This phrasing is a little awkward in context. And could use more commas.

University of Cambridge, 1850–56

• "A considerable part of Maxwell's translation of his equations regarding electromagnetism was accomplished during his time at Trinity." - Uncited.

Aberdeen University, 1856–60

• This section is very citation-poor. There's large sections at the end of most paragraphs with no obvious citations.
• The image is from 1869. Why not have a picture of Saturn here, and move the image down a little bit? I know it's meant to show the marriage, but a little more variety in images would be nice.

Later years

• More problems with ambiguous and missing citations.

Personality

• I hate to harp on this, but... more uncited bits. "A collection of his poems was published by his friend Lewis Campbell in 1882. Many appreciations of Maxwell remark upon his remarkable intellectual qualities being matched by social awkwardness."

Electromagnetism

• "Maxwell was proven correct, and his quantitative connection between light and electromagnetism is considered one of the great accomplishments of 19th century mathematical physics." - Uncited.

Colour analysis

• "Maxwell's purpose was not to present a method of colour photography, but to illustrate the basis of human colour perception and to show that the correct additive primaries are not red, yellow and blue, as was then taught, but red, green and blue. The three photographic plates now reside in a small museum at 14 India Street, Edinburgh, the house where Maxwell was born." Uncited. Also, I need to go to India Street. An unfortunate deletion, though, as the location of the plates, and the museum, is interesting.
• The bit about the red being ultraviolet is poorly set up. It's only clear the red in the photograph is paradoxical at the point the paradox is resolved.

Control theory

• Completely uncited.

Experiments in rigidity

• Does not exist, but mentioned in lead. - Now briefly discussed, at least. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 16:37, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

Legacy

• This isn't really a GA-blocker, but Image:James_Clerk_Maxwell_statue_in_George_Street,_Edinburgh.jpg isn't particularly good. It's one of the more awkward angles to take the statue from, and seems awfully tightly-cropped at the top. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 15:40, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

Images

• File:JamesClerkMaxwell-KatherineMaxwell-1869.jpg is a bit poorly documented. Whilst very likely PD in UK, it lacks the documentation that shows this.
• File:James Clerk Maxwell.png only establishes US PD; if that's all that can be established, it needs moved to en-wiki and off Commons.
• File:YoungJamesClerkMaxwell.jpg ditto, though almost certainly PD in UK.
• File:Maxwell's demon.svg - Maxwell's demon not described in text; whilst it's perfectly legitimate (and often useful) to describe minor ideas in image captions, it'd need properly described, and cited. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 15:53, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

I don't know much about the image process, but they look fine to me. Can it be assumed that all photos taken at that time are now in the public domain? 120 years has lapsed since his death, which is what the guideline seems to say.

There's not much, sadly, on commons for Maxwell. It's a great statue, so if you're about Edinburgh, it might make a Featured pic with the Autumn leaves, something like this. James^x12345 20:07, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

The actual text is pretty good, but there's a lot of citation issues, and some infelicities in the description. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 15:38, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

Is there any reason you removed the sentence " Maxwell would also go on to disprove mathematically the nebular hypothesis (which stated that the solar system formed through the progressive condensation of a purely gaseous nebula), which forced the proponents of that theory to account for the additional portions of small solid particles."?

The nebular hypothesis article, which is an FA, makes no mention of Maxwell, which likely means he didn't play a massive role in its development. (I left a reason in the edit summary, but in hindsight, that's not a good place to explain anything.) As a fairly conventional Christian, Maxwell attracts a lot of interest from the more modern Young Earth Creationist movement, which has a lot of rubbish masquerading as science. I didn't much like the idea that he "disproved" what is a fairly accepted theory. I couldn't find much either way, there's this and this, but neither is especially succinct. Neither was my answer :-) James^x12345 19:25, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

We're nearly there, then. One more citation, and the images need either documented or moved to en-wiki. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 19:43, 27 August 2013 (UTC) On the images, I've found http://www.clerkmaxwellfoundation.org/html/gallery.html which documents them better than any other site I've yet found. No photographer named, but at least the collection is. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 21:38, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

I've added 2 more refs to thermodynamics, so I think it's all sourced now. Maxwell and his wife now has a PD-UK template, but for young maxwell, there's this, whatever it means. I think the engraving is properly tagged already. James^x12345 19:47, 28 August 2013 (UTC)

You're going to get slaughtered at the FA image check, I fear. For example, "As a work from sometime before 1890, in the public domain." - that's not how British copyright works. But, eh, easiest solution is just to reupload all the images locally, making the problem disappear, since you can just use {{PD-US-1923-abroad}} and forget about it.

Still, eh, since they're all alright for use on en-wiki, I'll kick that can towards FAC. ✓ Pass Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 20:16, 28 August 2013 (UTC)

Many thanks. Before I think about FACs, I need to do a more research and actually read a number of bios. Thanks for the review - definitely worth 4 points (4 points!?) for the Wikicup. James^x12345 20:20, 28 August 2013 (UTC)

Eh, honestly, it's something I should do anyway. It's useful. =) Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 21:23, 28 August 2013 (UTC)