Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Teller–Ulam design/archive1

Teller-Ulam design

Well written informative article that meets nomination criteria Prodego^talk 21:54, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

• Object. There's some awkward wording in the introduction:
  • The Teller-Ulam configuration is a nuclear weapons design which is employed in thermonuclear weapons which is more colloquially referred to as the hydrogen bomb. - run on sentence, odd sounding. Is it this configuration or thermonuclear weapons in general which are referred to as hydrogen bombs? If "Tellam-Ulam design" and hydrogen bomb are interchangable terms, shouldn't hydrogen bomb redirect here?
  • The basic design is this: Like with any fission primary, a hollow sphere of weapons-grade material like Plutonium(Pu-239 seems to work best). Sounds weird; I would remove the first five words entirely and rewrite the remainder so that it isn't a sentence fragment. Also, "Pu-239 seems to work best" needs some sort of citation.

I'll copyedit/wikify some of it, but those two sentences stuck out. Rampart 23:45, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

• This was not the original wording, it was changed by an IP editor after the articles nomination. I have reverted to the original. Prodego^talk 00:08, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

• Excellent article. A few comments:

• There's a mix of straight inline links and Harvard citations that should probably be standardized. Using footnotes throughout is one possiblity, although there are doubtless others.
• The first section ("Public body of knowledge concerning nuclear weapon design") has some overlap with the "Public knowledge" sections later on. More generally, it seems, in its current wording and position, suspiciously like a disclaimer. Is there a reason why the section cannot be removed entirely, or perhaps limited to a few sentences in the introduction?

Other than that, great work! —Kirill Lokshin 02:52, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

• • Well, I think it was intended as a disclaimer. The sections which follow are somewhat speculative, and used to have that indicated in them, though an editor who didn't like to be doubted took that uncertainty out of them. I think it could be removed if the following sections were a little more cautious, considering almost none of this stuff has ever been unambiguously declassified. --Fastfission 04:42, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
    • Oh no, here we go again... 8-) Georgewilliamherbert 06:01, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

• Object. I love the diagrams; I'm sorry to say a lot of the writing leaves me flat. Generally, it isn't clean and flowing at the sentence level. I've seen a number of instances of non-encyclopedic lapses ("Comparing the three mechanisms proposed, we see that...") and I found the frequent mentions of discussing some point or other in "a section below" distracting. There are many sentences that are just difficult to read. (One example: "DOD official declassification reports indicate that foamed plastic materials are or may be used in radiation case liners, and despite the low direct plasma pressure they may be of use in delaying the ablation until energy has distributed evenly and a sufficient fraction has reached the secondary's tamper/pusher." Some other issues:
  • I don't mind Harvard referencing, but I don't think the anonymous URL links [1] are good enough for an FA, and the mix of both is unsightly. Why not use footnotes?
  • The section title "Basic Principal" doesn't make sense. "Technology"?
  • If the ablation pressure is thought to be the real mechanism, it should be discussed first, and the other topics, perhaps, not given equal space.
  • One-paragraph subsections, like the two stating off the "History" section, are a sympom of an organizational problem.

—Bunchofgrapes (talk) 05:32, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

• • Just a comment on the "real mechanism" — it depends on who it "is thought by". Personally I think the whole article could use a little more attention to attribution of opinion rather than just saying one is right and the others are wrong considering the basis of making that judgment (back of the envelope calculations by amateur weapons designers) seems fairly thin to me. In any event, I'd appreciate better citation at the very least, personally. Theories do not just exist independently in space. --Fastfission 01:21, 9 December 2005 (UTC)
    • Well, your critiques seem to tell me at least that the article has not really reached a satisfactory consensus version, and so that's another reason it shouldn't be an FA. —Bunchofgrapes (talk) 05:28, 9 December 2005 (UTC)
      • I think we have a working consensus. We all mutually agree it could be better, but not exactly how. It has been good enough that people aren't arguing significantly and/or counter-editing each other for some time. It's hard to achieve encyclopedic perfection in a topic area where actual detailed technical work is classified in every nation on earth, and technical testing and demonstrations are currently against international treaty and considered by most social groups to be only slightly better than committing war crimes. Fastfission and I disagree about the degree to which we accurately know some things about it, but I think we have consensus on the parameters for agreeing to disagree, and the article represents that. Others editing has confused some of that a bit but not changed the fundamentals. Georgewilliamherbert 01:38, 11 December 2005 (UTC)
• Comment - Since the History of the Teller-Ulam design was created as a separate article on 14 August 2005 it has not been edited, however the history section in the main article has. Partly because of this the history section is not a good summary of it's child article. CheekyMonkey 19:43, 8 December 2005 (UTC)
• Just a comment. don't want to keep on in this tired way (Georgewilliamherbert and I have already argued over this more than I choose to spend time doing), but if you take a look at the original form of the article you can get a better idea of at least what I think works better as an enyclopedia article. Personally I'd nix the "technical discussions" in favor of more accessible explanations (nobody is going to come to our page to actually learn how to build one, after all, and anyway we are not trying to be a replacement for NuclearWeaponsArchive.org -- we are an encyclopedia), integrate the history better (it is far more interesting than the putative explanations, in my opinion), and attribute theories better rather than trying to prove them through putatively useful calculations (which borders on WP:NOR, in my opinion). But again, that's just my personal approach to this, in terms of what is a more useful and readable article. --Fastfission 01:27, 9 December 2005 (UTC)
• Glowing Support, very good article on something which still could destroy civilization as we know it. Did you know Teller was one of the models for Dr. Strangelove? --R.D.H. (Ghost In The Machine) 03:22, 10 December 2005 (UTC)
• Comment - Why is the series of images for the Foam/Plasma pressure and tamper/pusher ablation explanations to the reaction of a different style? It's not enough for me to object, but I think that an article should have consistancy, it makes wikipedia look that much more professional, and I would prefer if the article had a similar style of diagram for both, with a preference for the top one. - Hahnchen 05:05, 11 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Without the original drawing program source for the top image, it was impractical to recreate it in detail. I have no objection to an artist either starting over again with the same concept for illustration of the ablation model but the style used in the foam one, or taking my image source file and modifying it more in the style of the upper one. I believe I used Illustrator for the ablation one. Georgewilliamherbert 03:13, 13 December 2005 (UTC)
• Object. Remove external links from the mainbody, use inline citations to reference them. Also, MoS states that bold text should be avoided in the main body.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus ^Talk 20:09, 16 December 2005 (UTC)