Talk:John Dalton/Archive 1

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Archive 1

Spam link?

There are some good bios on Dalton out there. I will hold off if it really bothers you so much. -- Pinktulip 11:06, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

Page name

There are several links to this page that mean to be going to The Kinks' John Dalton. Specifically, at least The Kinks and Mick Avory erroneously lead here. I don't know if there is a real page for the other John Dalton, but somebody ought to correct it.

On the other hand, it's pretty funny to be on The Kink's page, and click on the name of the former bassist and end up here.

I have now created a John Dalton (disambiguation), and fixed those two links for the musician (as well as one more for a US secretary of the navy). andy 11:14, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Can we rename the article back to John Dalton? The scientist is by far the best known person of this name so it would seem appropriate. Billlion 19:16, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

Vandalism

We have a serious issue, since this page (John Dalton) has been vandalized repeatedly from different ip addresses. We need to find a way to stop this. - NSD Student 03:30, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Article was adapted from 1911 encyclopedia.

I think this fact should be mentioned somewhere on the main page. Also, there's a problem with the number in the very last sentence. AxelBoldt

Have put a note on the main page (I'll do this for all articles in future). There seems to be some problems with whatever OCR the text was scanned through, some of the text of other articles is almost unreadable. sodium

I think you are right there is a lot of information that is not on this page that should be. It would be really cool if I could talk to John Dalton. The name of this page refers to talking to John Dalton. I am mad that it is deceiving.

all the text is almost exactly identical to that found on reference.com ... - tara

Because reference.com copied the contents, and credits it like they should. See Wikipedia:Mirrors and forks. andy 20:36, 26 November 2005 (UTC)

Wait, what vandalization has been going on? What exactly has been posted?--- Odin 19:02, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

I believe This is one example, currently up: " Dalton was unable to attend Oxford or Cambridge because they were only open to members of the Church of England(fags)." I'm going to change it. Any objections?- Nevermind, someone already did.

Unsurprising for a 1911 source, the text simply describes Dalton as a sloppy experimentalist. There should be some mention of the appearance of Dalton's work in support of the Law of Exact Proportions as a case study in Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. -- Alan Peakall 18:29 Feb 18, 2003 (UTC)

Dalton-genius

Would have been interesting to mention how very brilliant Dalton was. Please see Bill Bryson's History of Nearly Everything. In the book I believe the author mentions that at 12 years of age Dalton was something of a headmaster at a local school. At 14 he was reading Newtons Principia in Latin and "and other works of a similarly challenging nature." At his Death, over 40,000 attended. He was an interesting personality. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 70.191.228.234 (talk) 03:59, 17 April 2007 (UTC).

Spelling

I changed "color" to "colour" to conform with what appeared to be the majority of the spellings. Are there other UK/US variations that should be fixed? -- Astrochemist 20:20, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Yes: "honor" should be changed to the UK English spelling "honour" in a similar way I feel. Kadior 22/4/07

Bio/Ref?

Another possible entry for the bio:

http://www.exnet.com/1996/04/15/science/science.html —Preceding unsigned comment added by 195.137.27.82 (talk) 23:22, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Mistake in the Lagacy section

{{editsemiprotected}} The thoroughfare in central Manchester is called "John Dalton Street", not "John Dalton Road"Dfvj (talk) 18:31, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

You right, I've made the change. Nev1 (talk) 18:39, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

Miscellaneous

whoever locked this page, tyvm NSD Student 05:29, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

In terms of the '"New College" in Manchester' at which Dalton taught I was confused to click the link and see a map of Oxford for 'Harris Manchester college'. So which is it New College in Manchester or Harris Manchester in Oxford? Much appreicated.--62.25.109.195 (talk) 08:49, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

Same place. A peripatetic school indeed! --Old Moonraker (talk) 11:36, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

Tense and style

I'm wondering why in places this uses the present tense "he proceeds..." instead of the more conventional "he proceeded" and also seems to be a lot of use of "he" even at the beginning of a section like "atomic weighs" where a name seems more appropriate. Thoughts? I now changed this in one or two of the more obvious places. Zvis (talk) 20:57, 27 December 2009 (UTC)

Democritus

I have reverted a strange edit which removed a reference to classical ideas of atomism. The citation is entirely justified and puts the matter in context. Peterlewis (talk) 21:34, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

That was me. I'm not sure if my edit was strange, but neither am I sure my edit was justified. Care to explain how Dalton's theory was in contrast with 'the Ancient Greeks'? The clarification provided here might help us reach a satisfactory compromise wording. Thank you! --Heyitspeter (talk) 00:29, 23 March 2010 (UTC)
Here is a quote from the Democritus article which may help:

Democritus, along with Leucippus and Epicurus, proposed the earliest views on the shapes and connectivity of atoms. They reasoned that the solidness of the material corresponded to the shape of the atoms involved. Thus, iron atoms are solid and strong with hooks that lock them into a solid; water atoms are smooth and slippery; salt atoms, because of their taste, are sharp and pointed; and air atoms are light and whirling, pervading all other materials.[27] Democritus was the main proponent of this view. Using analogies from our sense experiences, he gave a picture or an image of an atom that distinguished them from each other by their shape, their size, and the arrangement of their parts. Moreover, connections were explained by material links in which single atoms were supplied with attachments: some with hooks and eyes others with balls and sockets.[28] The Democritean atom is an inert solid (merely excluding other bodies from its volume) that interacts with other atoms mechanically. In contrast, modern, quantum-mechanical atoms interact via electric and magnetic force fields and are far from inert.

This is the point of comparing Dalton's concept with the ideas of Greek philospohers. Dalton's ideas were firmly based on experiment, while the Greeks on pure speculation. Peterlewis (talk) 05:30, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

Well, Dalton's particular atomic theory is known to be false, and was falsified by evidence available to him,[1][2] so I'd rather not take the "Greeks were speculating Dalton was working with facts" line.
Can we think of ideas unique to Dalton vs. 'the Greeks'?--Heyitspeter (talk) 06:58, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

Your refs are just abstracts, so impossible to digest. Cite your evidence for the falsity of his theory. Peterlewis (talk) 17:44, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

Sorry. I have access to Jstor so those links give me the whole article. I can give you more info on those papers via e-mail if you like. Dalton's calculations of the relative weights of atoms contradict the Periodic table. They're wrong by the standards of modern science. Also, the contemporary evidence available to him was impossible to interpret in terms of whole number proportions, which his (and modern science's) theories require. Granted, the experiments were flawed, but he was working only with these experiments in composing his theory so he could not claim special knowledge.--Heyitspeter (talk) 20:45, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

Lack of Citations

I have added a Citation needed tag for this article. I have done this because in reading the article, many of the facts that it lists have no citation listed to back them up, which is a problem. I am new at editing, so I'm not sure if I used the proper tag, but I'm hoping I used the correct one. Ebmonkey2 (talk) 22:16, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

Billiard balls?

The navigational {{Atomic models}} template lists the Dalton atomic model as the "billiard ball" model and links to the "Five main points of Dalton's atomic theory" section here, but there's no mention in the article of a billiard ball analogy. This seems like an oversight. Has something changed in the article? Is that even a fair name of the model parallel to the other analogy-based nicknames of the other models? — Ƶ§œš¹ [ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ] 05:40, 5 March 2012 (UTC) He Was GAy — Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.180.46.148 (talk) 13:10, 10 October 2012 (UTC)

Edit request on 9 August 2013

Please change "and it was this which differentiated his theory from the historic speculations of the Greeks, such as Democritus and Lucretius." to "and it was this which differentiated his theory from the historic speculations of the Greeks, such as Democritus and Leucippus." Bebokkos (talk) 09:10, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

I see your point -- Lucretius was not Greek, but Roman -- so yes, this needs to be changed. However, Lucretius was simply expressing in Latin many ideas of the Greek atomist Epicurus, who lived a century or more after Democritus and Leucippus. Perhaps it would be better to write "... Democritus, Leucippus, and Epicurus."

Not done: I would make the amended change, but that section is already tagged as needing a citation for this claim. Can you provide a reliable source for the thought? Thanks, Celestra (talk) 20:48, 4 September 2013 (UTC) He pictured Atom as tiny,SOLID Sphere.......... And you can see it if you will study hard like me.... — Preceding unsigned comment added by 49.147.161.79 (talk) 13:39, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

DEPICTIONS OF CONTEMPORARIES

This article now has nine depictions: five of Dalton, four of contemporaries. It's my opinion the four contemporaries should be deleted - they can be seen by hyperlink at their own pages. Unless their are objections posted here, I will proceed with deleting them. IiKkEe (talk) 22:27, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

Agree. Martinevans123 (talk) 22:33, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

A paragraph that bothers me in John_Dalton#Atomic_theory

I am trying to write an open-source quiz for the PBS NOVA episode "Hunting the elements" and want to include some questions regarding the atomic theory. (See for this quiz I wrote for Chasing Pluto). I know a lot less about Chemistry than about Astronomy, so I needed to do some research, and that is what brought me here. The following paragraph from John_Dalton#Atomic_theory bothers me: 

It has been proposed that this theory was suggested to him either by researches on ethylene (olefiant gas) and methane (carburetted hydrogen) or by analysis of nitrous oxide (protoxide of azote) and nitrogen dioxide (deutoxide of azote) .... However, a study of Dalton's own laboratory notebooks...concluded that so far from Dalton being led by his search for an explanation of the law of multiple proportions to the idea that chemical combination consists in the aof atoms of definite and characteristic weight...
copyvio?

This seems to imply that the arguments based on ethylene and methane gases did NOT involve the "interaction of atoms of definite and characteristic weight". If this is true, then I presume he used the volumes of the gasses and not just the weights. If this presumption is true, then that should be stated in the paragraph, and a reference needs to be provided. As it stands, the words that follow the text it has been proposed... seems to be an unsupported statement. Confirmation of my suspicion that volume played a factor comes from page 483 of this reference:

https://books.google.com/books?id=u61cAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA483&dq=Thomas+Thomson+element+of+chemistry+100+azotic+gas&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CCcQ6AEwAGoVChMIjIqbv-aFxwIVTIoNCh12agC-#v=onepage&q=Thomas%20Thomson%20element%20of%20chemistry%20100%20azotic%20gas&f=false

If nobody responds to this in a few days, I will go ahead and edit the section myself and add the aforementioned link--Guy vandegrift (talk) 17:30, 31 July 2015 (UTC)

I added an image from the Link in Google books and am waiting to hear if this is copyvio. The image would proabably not be used in this article (perhaps Atomic_theory#Dalton?). Instead a brief sentence (or less) should suffice.--Guy vandegrift (talk) 18:43, 31 July 2015 (UTC)

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