Talk:Nuclear weapon design

Wiki Education assignment: Introduction to Policy Analysis

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 28 March 2022 and 30 May 2022. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Lesotelo1218 (article contribs).

Is there a way to squeeze a "92" subscript under the "238" superscript?

I can't seem to be able to do it. The best I could do was create a subscript followed by a superscript followed by a "U", which is not quite right. Polar Apposite (talk) 23:12, 26 July 2023 (UTC)

Well you could do that, but the better way is to use our {{chem}} template. {{chem|238|92|U}} will give you ²³⁸
₉₂U. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 23:51, 26 July 2023 (UTC)

More usual would be with {{ComplexNuclide}}, such as {{ComplexNuclide|U|235}} to generate ²³⁵
₉₂U
or ²³⁵
₉₂U
with link=yes if you want a link. Gah4 (talk) 05:22, 27 July 2023 (UTC)

That works like you said. Thanks a lot. Fabulous. Polar Apposite (talk) 15:04, 18 August 2023 (UTC)

Thanks that is awesome. It works like you said. I tried adding link=yes and it made it into a link. And it works for molecules, too. Fantastic. Polar Apposite (talk) 14:59, 18 August 2023 (UTC)

²³⁵
U versus uranium-235.

What are your thoughts on when to use ²³⁵
U rather than uranium-235 or U-235 and are there guidelines about this in place at Wikipedia?

All I could find was, at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Nuclide, was:

"The Nuclide templates are to be used for displaying nuclide, isotope and element symbols, specifically in formulae. They can optionally link to the page for the specific nuclide, isotope or element."

The phrase, "specifically in formulae", could be taken to mean "exclusively in formulae", but it isn't crystal clear to me.

Googling usage of nuclide symbols, when to use nuclide symols and so on yielded nothing. Even "don't use that nuclide symbol" yielded nothing about when and when not use a nuclide symbol. I also tried "when to use chemical symbols" and "don't use chemical symbols". Nothing.

https://www.wikidoc.org/index.php/Nuclear_isomer says that Co-58m is more usual than 58mCo. Even easier for the layman to understand and pronounce would be "cobalt-58m". Universities, journals, professors, and students may wish to impress, mystify, or even exclude the layman, but it is surely not Wikipedia's job to do this. Is it?

"Metastable isomers of a particular isotope are usually designated with an "m" (or, in the case of isotopes with more than one isomer, m2, m3, and so on). This designation is usually placed after the atomic symbol and number of the atom (e.g., Co-58m), but is sometimes placed as a superscript before (e.g., 58mCo). Increasing indices, m, m2, etc. correlate with increasing levels of excitation energy stored in each of the isomeric states (e.g., Hf-177m2 or 177m2Hf)"

My feeling is that ²³⁵
U and similar difficult to read symbols don't belong in the normal text of an encyclopedia article (except when telling the reader that this is another way to represent it, that is to say, *mentioning* it rather than using it), because even if the reader is familiar with this notation (a big "if") it is *still* takes much longer to read. Also, in Wikipedia, space is essentially unlimited because Wikipedia is not normally printed on paper so there is no advantage to being super compact.

It *does* belong, IMHO, in diagrams and formulas (when space is limited, and that's not always the case), and anywhere else where space is limited, or the writer's time is.

Nuclear weapon design From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia uses U-235, uranium-235, and of course the arcane, hard to read symbols mixed together, for example in,

"Materials which can sustain a chain reaction are called fissile. The two fissile materials used in nuclear weapons are: ²³⁵U, also known as highly enriched uranium (HEU), "oralloy" meaning "Oak Ridge alloy",[Edit: deleted reference]

In fact, throughout this article, and many other Wikipedia articles, and the Simple English Wikipedia, the various terms are used more or less at random. It is not Wikipedia's job, IMHO, to force the reader to become familiar with hard to read symbols by repeatedly exposing the reader to them.

Just did a quick survey of the top encyclopedia results on Google, for this. The Simple English Wikipedia uses a wrongly capitalized "Uranium-235", in,

"Enriched uranium is best known for its use in the bombing of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. The bomb called Little Boy used Uranium-235." The grammar is all over the place as well. And the two forms are combined in this sentence, in the same article it says:

Uranium-235 has 235Pa, 235Np, and 239Pu as its parent isotopes.

Encyclopedia Britannica in its article on uranium-235, uses "uranium-235" for the first twenty lines or so, which I liked, but then, with no preamble, or explanation, uses the arcane symbols. I can see how tempting it must have been to use them, but they should, IMHO, have written "uranium-235 hexafluoride" and "uranium-238 hexafluoride", instead of using nuclide symbols. I repeat, the nuclide symbols should be mentioned at some point, probably only once, in the prose, perhaps in parentheses.

To digress perhaps, but just for a moment, "triuranium octoxide" is appropriate for normal prose. Not every reader will like, or understand "U3O8" (the 3 and the 8 would be subscripts). In fact, readers are mostly repelled by even simple formulas. Unimpressive on their part, of course, but we should be compassionate. We are here to help, right?

Encyclopedia.com is to my taste. It doesn't mention a single nuclide symbol in its article. It has only "uranium-235", "the 235 isotope", "the uranium-235 isotope", and "U-235". All are have obvious pronunciations that come to mind instantly. And they are all familiar to every reader. IMHO, Wikipedia should probably start imitating this encyclopedia.

Anyway, I'm all ears. What are your thoughts? Polar Apposite (talk) 17:03, 18 August 2023 (UTC)

WP:Naming_conventions_(chemistry)#Isotopes doesn't express a preference for how isotopes are written except in formulas (unless I'm missing something). The formula U3O8 is much more approachable than the binomial name, so I disagree with the idea of systematically removing chemical formulas. We generally write in article body assuming the reader is generally familiar with the concept so I don't see any issues there. VQuakr (talk) 20:02, 18 August 2023 (UTC)

I'll have a look at your link.

IMHO, "triuranium octoxide" is far more widely understood than "U3O8", so the latter is not "much more approachable". It is much *less* approachable. Anyone with a brain knows what carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, and iron oxide is, and what uranium is, and can figure out what "triuranium octoxide" must mean. With a bit of luck the lay reader will also have heard of trinitrotoluene or trinitroglycerine, especially if reading about nuclear weapon design.

And even the most brainless reader has heard of the triangle and the tripod, and the octagon and the octopus. "Triuranium octoxide" is plain English. U3O8 requires deciphering. Many people will not even try to decipher it. Those that can decipher it will be slowed down in their reading. People forget, it seems that long words can be read just as fast as short ones, if they are familiar.

Wikipedia uses, IMHO, way too many abbreviations. The reader should be told what the correct abbreviation is, but shouldn't be forced to become familiar with it. The fact that it makes writing easier should not count for anything. "The President of the United States" can be read as quickly or quicker than "the POTUS". The latter is easier to type, that is all. Newspapers, maybe even books, all need to conserve space. Maybe radio and television need to conserve air time. Wikipedia has no such need. Reader comprehension, reading time, and pleasure is what counts. Writing time, and writing pleasure should count for nothing in the decision of when to use an abbreviation.

It's even worse when the abbreviation is an unfamiliar one. So, *so* many times, I have seen in Wikipedia an unfamiliar abbreviation being defined and then used for the rest of the article, for a total of two or three times, as if to teach the reader, by repeated use, the abbreviation.

I was thrilled by using the nuclide symbol templates for the first time, recently, and so, when I found myself getting irritated by seeing nuclide symbols in the prose parts of articles in Wikipedia, I wondered why. I concluded that it was because it was *still* a hassle to stop and decode the symbol, and turn it into "uranium two three five" under my breath, even though I could see the beauty of the symbols, and of the templates. They are ingenious and compact, and invaluable for use in formulas and diagrams, and whenever space is limited. But they don't normally belong in prose. Polar Apposite (talk) 21:51, 20 August 2023 (UTC)

I looked at the link. It says, "Isotopes are named and identified as [element]-[mass number] with regular lowercase and hyphen (carbon-13), or by equivalent symbol format 13C[...]" The nuclide symbol format is put it second place. Not just here, but consistently, *systematically*, throughout the section. It suggests that it is the second choice to be used in exceptional circumstances, such as when space is limited, as in an equation or diagram. In other words, the "or" is short for, "or, if that's not possible or not practical," Polar Apposite (talk) 23:03, 20 August 2023 (UTC)

Here's a relatively simple proposal: for the first use in any section, spell it out verbose with an appended isotope (uranium-235). For subsequent uses, use the standard abbreviated form (²³⁵U). Convert the odd hybrids (U-235) to one or the other. NuclearSecrets (talk) 13:42, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

That would be the same as our treatment of acronyms an acronym should be written out in full the first time it is used on a page, followed by the abbreviation in parentheses e.g. maximum transmission unit (MTU) if it is used later in the article. (MOS:ACRO1STUSE) Hawkeye7 (discuss) 19:29, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

But when should an acronym be used *at all*? That's the issue here. Sure, *if* it's used it should be done as you describe. The ignorant reader can use "control F" to search for "MTU" starting at the top of the article, and quickly find out what it stands for. Unfortunately, the even more ignorant reader won't habitually use "control F". See, readers don't always read the whole article, and if they do, they, don't always read it from start to finish, but rather jump around. Polar Apposite (talk) 22:16, 20 August 2023 (UTC)

Isotopes should be labelled by their mass number, e.g. ¹⁴C and ¹⁸F. Deuterium (²H) and tritium (³H) may be labelled "D" (or "²D") and "T" (or "³T"), respectively. (MOS:CHEMISTRY) Hawkeye7 (discuss) 19:34, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

Why should they be labelled like that? What is the advantage in using a compact and unfamiliar notation (albeit ingenious) rather than plain English? The very fact that we, including you, write "Deuterium (2H) and tritium (3H)" shows that the English words are the standard way to refer to these nuclides, and the nuclide symbols are just that, symbols. We say, "he is an unknown quantity", not "he is an x". We that our bones contain calcium, and our blood, iron. We don't say they contain Ca and Fe. We say that we are carbon bases life forms, not C based. Polar Apposite (talk) 22:39, 20 August 2023 (UTC)

Very diplomatic of you. But when one side of a debate is saying that two and two are four, and the other side, that they are five, one should not compromise by agreeing that they are four and half. Polar Apposite (talk) 21:57, 20 August 2023 (UTC)

These are matters of convention, not matters of fact. Writing is always about compromises. NuclearSecrets (talk) 18:06, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

I don't think you are right to say "the standard abbreviated form (235U)". Googling 235U got two million hits, while "U-235" got 550 million. "235U" is an ingenious bit of chemical notation. It is familiar to exceptionally competent students of chemistry, but even then, it takes a lot of time to decode it when reading, because it is not a normal abbreviation. In English, the "two three five" comes after the "uranium", but the nuclide symbol has it come first. I really like it, but it doesn't belong in prose, IMHO. I have stated several disadvantages of doing so. Can you state any advantages of using "235U" in prose? Polar Apposite (talk) 22:24, 20 August 2023 (UTC)

By "verbose", you seem to mean in plain English, and so you are misusing the term. The word "verbose", means "using too many words". Writing "uranium-235" is not using too many words. It is using (plain English) words. "Nineteen eighty-four" is not verbose, even though you could cut three words and use "1984" instead. The term, "uranium-235" is the IUPAC name, by the way.

If space is somewhat limited, "U-235" is far more widely understood than 235U, because it is obvious that it means "uranium-235". It is much easier for everyone, including experts, to read, because the order has not been changed. "235U" is confusing, and even *I* don't know how to pronounce it. Is it "two three five you", "you two three five", "uranium two three five", "two three five uranium", "uranium two hundred and thirty-five", "two hundred and thirty-five uranium", or something else? This imposes a mostly useless cognitive load on the reader, and slows him down, and causes boredom and disgust --probably to an unreasonable degree, but, like I said, we should be compassionate. I can't believe even the Simple English Wikipedia used the nuclide symbol unnecessarily.

I don't agree that "U-235" is a "hybrid". It is the standard abbreviation of "uranium-235". 235U is an ultra compressed form of it, created for use in equations, much a "x^2" replaces "the square of the unknown quantity". Polar Apposite (talk) 15:44, 21 August 2023 (UTC)

None of the replies have addressed the fact that Wikipedia uses nuclide symbols in prose much more than other encyclopedias. I suggest that it is self indulgence. Wikipedia doesn't need to make a profit.

And none of the replies have stated what are the advantages of using nuclide symbols in prose instead of plain English. Polar Apposite (talk) 22:47, 20 August 2023 (UTC)

I just found out that the IUPAC name is radon-219. Here's the link: https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/compound/Radon-219#%3A%7E%3Atext=Radon-219+atom+is+a%2CMedical+Subject+Headings+%28MeSH%29&section=IUPAC-Name&fullscreen=true Polar Apposite (talk) 23:08, 20 August 2023 (UTC)

WP:THREAD, please. We're rapidly moving away from a question and answer about our manual of style to diatribes. There's no guarantee you'll like the result of a consensus. Radon-219 and 219-Radon both show up in Pubchem, along with other formulations of its synonymns [1]. VQuakr (talk) 16:31, 21 August 2023 (UTC)

There isn't one "right way" to do any of this. It is just about conventions and legibility. It seems like the Manual of Style allows for multiple possibilities. It's really a matter of choice and style. For me, what is most important aspect is consistency and clarity. I am not opposed to making all usages verbose, frankly. "Uranium-235" is clearer than "U-235" or "²³⁵U". But I think "uranium-235" followed by either "U-235" or "²³⁵U" is also pretty clear. However I think that including both "U-235" and "²³⁵U" in the same article is confusing to people who might not recognize that these are meant to refer to exactly the same thing. And in any event, it looks careless. As it is, it is pretty idiosyncratic. Some paragraphs re-use "uranium-235" multiple times (which is fine by me) but then have a random abbreviation thrown in here or there, of either style. My sense is that eliminating all abbreviations except inside actual reaction formulae would not do any real damage to the text (it wouldn't get any more repetitive than it is now). NuclearSecrets (talk) 18:16, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

I'm more in the "write out the first time, abbreviate afterwards" camp, but my feelings on it are not particularly strong. VQuakr (talk) 19:29, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

I replaced some of the nuclide symbols used in prose parts of the article, while leaving unchanged those merely mentioned-- generally they were in parentheses. I think I replaced all the nuclide symbols in the first part (chapter one?) of the article. Part One, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapon_design#Nuclear_reactions.

If you have no objection, I will do some more of the article

It took me about an hour to do "Chapter One" using control F with the string "sup>" and deleting the template and then typing in the IUPAC name. I just realized I could have used "find and replace" with the whole template as the find part and the IUPAC name as the replace part. I think that would work. But I guess I'd need to then change back all the wrongly changed ones, that is to say, the ones being mentioned in the prose or used in equations. The ones mentioned in prose are at least almost always in parentheses, which I guess could be used to change them back automatically. That leaves the equations. And the ones I saw in the article don't use the sup> string in their templates, but rather a math template that doesn't contain that. Hmm. So I should be able to work on this a bit faster from now on --assuming no one objects. Murphy's law says someone will.

Does anyone know a faster/better way? Polar Apposite (talk) 19:18, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

I'm not sure that nuclide symbols are abbreviations. The term, "uranium-235" can be written as "U-235" which is truly an abbreviation and follows the normal rules for making an abbreviation. Everything is the same except the word "uranium" has been replaced with "U". This is analogous to writing, "the United States" as "the US". "U-235" is IMHO the best abbreviation for "uranium-235, if (a big "if") one needs one.

With a nuclide symbol, it's not *just* shortened, but rearranged, and the number is miniaturized. It's actually a form of a matrix made up of miniature numbers, as you can see more clearly when the matrix is complete with slots for mass number at top left, atomic number at bottom left, and ionic charge at top right. It's awesome when used in an equation, because you can easily see that the mass numbers add up on both sides, and likewise the charge numbers, and so on. But it doesn't belong in prose.

This brings me to another problem with nuclide symbols used as abbreviations in prose: the reduced size of the numbers in a problem. For the prose to be readable when printed on paper, when it contains nuclide symbols used in place of the full size names with full size numbers (or an abbreviation with full-size numbers, like "U-235") it will need to be printed using a larger size font for the miniature numbers of the nuclide symbols to be easily readable. Now the rest of the prose is too big. Ink and paper is wasted, and the reading speed and comprehension is presumably affected to. More page turns, or more scrolling downs if on a screen are needed, for the entire article. And this goes for an article that one merely thinks *might* have nuclide symbols used in the prose instead of normal abbreviations, or full names of nuclides. This is because one needs to either print it larger just in case, or check the whole article before printing, or invest in a magnifying glass. Thus the abuse of nuclide symbols in one article can even cause inconvenience and expense (and environmental harm) for readers of other articles that merely look like they might contain misused nuclide symbols. Polar Apposite (talk) 16:24, 2 September 2023 (UTC)

Nuclide symbols are maybe not only not exactly abbreviations, but are perhaps not exactly symbols either. A nuclide symbol has much in common with a matrix, and much in common with a table, and much in common with a diagram, none of which belong in prose, especially when it must be miniaturized to fit into a line.

One could, in principle, have a template that allows you to squeeze a miniaturized matrix, table, or diagram into prose in Wikipedia. Maybe they exist already --besides the nuclide symbol templates, I mean. Then, instead of writing "water", you could use a template to add a miniature line diagram of the water molecule, conveniently showing the angle between the bonds.

Such diagrams are great for seeing how amino acids combine to form a peptide, and how the bulkiness (except in the case of glycine, which has a very small side chain) of the side chains causes them to twist around and stick out on opposite sides of the peptide in an alternating pattern, for example. And instead of writing "lysine", you *could* use the hypothetical template I mentioned to squeeze a miniaturized version of the line diagram of lysine into the line of text in the prose of a Wikipedia article.

And this might be useful, if it is in brackets after the word, "lysine", so that you still know which amino acid is being referred to without looking at the diagram, in other words, when the diagram is in effect being merely *mentioned* and not used in place of the normal full name or normal (easily readable even without a magnifying glass, at one's typical choice of font for that type of document) abbreviation.

So, a line needs to be drawn regarding use of templates to add what are essentially images (emojis are images, of course) to text. I would suggest that that line should be at nuclide symbols because of the miniaturization of the numbers. This is a separate issue from the rearrangement aspect, which is perhaps a little difficult to make cut and dried (although it is in practice IMHO just as important). Polar Apposite (talk) 17:02, 2 September 2023 (UTC)

"It seems like the Manual of Style allows for multiple possibilities." That was also my impression when I had a look, after VQuakr mentioned it. Polar Apposite (talk) 01:05, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

Often, an abbreviation, or indeed the name written out in full, can be replaced with something else, like a pronoun, say, which helps avoid repetitiveness within individual sentences, and within paragraphs. For example, the paragraph:

"X is important, and many want x. X has been important for at least 35 years."

can be changed to,

"X is important, and many want it. It has been important for at least 35 years."

Readability is thereby improved considerably. Polar Apposite (talk) 16:17, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

What I'm talking about is not new to Wikipedia, or even to the article. The following paragraph the Fission section (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapon_design#Fission) is an example:

"The uranium-235 nucleus can split in many ways, provided the charge numbers add up to 92 and the mass numbers add up to 236 (uranium-235 plus the neutron that caused the split). The following equation shows one possible split, namely into strontium-95 (⁹⁵Sr), xenon-139 (¹³⁹Xe), and two neutrons (n), plus energy

$\ {}^{235}\mathrm {U} +\mathrm {n} \longrightarrow {}^{95}\mathrm {Sr} +{}^{139}\mathrm {Xe} +2\ \mathrm {n} +180\ \mathrm {MeV}$

"

I think it illustrates the advantages of the format/style quite well. Polar Apposite (talk) 16:32, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

Adding charge numbers to some nuclide symbols.

"The uranium-235 nucleus can split in many ways, provided the charge numbers add up to 92 and the mass numbers add up to 236 (uranium-235 plus the neutron that caused the split). The following equation shows one possible split, namely into[...]". Since it says "the charge numbers add up to 92", I thought it might be an idea to replace the nuclide symbols that show only the mass numbers with some that show both mass number and charge number. Any thoughts on that? Polar Apposite (talk) 21:22, 25 August 2023 (UTC)

List of US linear implosion weapons - Artillery

I was reading the article and was struck by how out of place the "List of US linear implosion weapons" is. The article doesn't have any other lists of bomb models other than historically significant ones. This list is as US-centric as can be. The preceding and succeeding paragraphs are about how criticality is triggered, not about what models of United States' bombs use those methods. The list is unsourced and not helpful. There is already a sentience in the preceding paragraph about how linear implosion is used in artillery shells (if that is the case, I don't know, hard to tell from scant sources). None of the linked articles in that list mention linear implosion, and those don't have many sources either. How do people feel about me deleting that list? Gravel for breakfast (talk) 13:06, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

How about sourcing it? Hansen (1988), pp. 21, 28, 174-176. You can drop the list. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 19:15, 19 October 2023 (UTC)