Talk:Polarizability

Magnetic Polarizability

There was an article on this subject that was deleted. I have found a link to this subject in an ibox in the Neutron article, and there are probably other links in other articles. So I added this subject to this article as a section, however I am not an expert on the subject and did the best I could, which was probably wanting. The section definitely needs the massaging from an expert who can accurately display this subject for readers in terms they will understand.
 —  Paine (Ellsworth's Climax)  02:20, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

Should Polarizability be split into two articles?

I would like to make some changes to this article's description of electric polarizability. But before doing so, I wanted to raise the question of whether this article should be split into two: one for electric polarizability and one for magnetic polarizability. This would parallel Wikipedia's treatment of electric susceptibility and magnetic susceptibility. In addition, there are mixed electric-magnetic polarizabilities that might eventually be described in yet a third article.

If it seems advisable to split this article into two, the next question would be "What should happen to the Polarizability article?" In the fields of chemical/molecular physics and physical chemistry, a researcher who refers to "polarizability" without further qualification usually means the electric dipole-electric dipole polarizability α. So an argument could be made for the term "polarizability" to redirect readers to "electric polarizability", with a hatnote placed at the top of the electric polarizability article that refers readers to the magnetic polarizability article. Alternatively, the Polarizability article could become a very short article with links to longer articles that discuss electric polarizabilities, magnetic polarizabilities, mixed electric-magnetic polarizabilities, and hyperpolarizabilities in more detail.

– Rhinde (talk) 18:02, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

I like your idea of creating longer articles for each topic, and having this article just give an overview. Christopher King (talk) 20:26, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

I support splitting this article. I propose to split it into 2: "polarizability" (containing the present content about the electric polarizability of molecules, plus links to magnetic polarizability and to the other part) and an article labeled "nuclear polarizability" (with the present rich material about the nuclear polarizabilities). Since there is no specific article on "electric polarizability", we must keep the present contents, and since most scientists referring to polarizability mean usually electric polarizability, I would avoid creating a third page about "electric polarizability". I do now a little pre-cleanup, removing some residual mixup of molecular and nuclear stuff, but someone should then do the split. Who does it? Rhinde? Nicola.Manini (talk) 12:07, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

OK, since nobody volounteers on this task, I can do it myself one of the next days, as soon as I have one spare hour. Nicola.Manini (talk) 10:47, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

Alkanes are the most polarizable molecules. Are they?

This statement, at face value, has a good chance to be wrong. An alkane composed of, say 30 or 50 atoms has no chance of being even remotely as polarizable as, e.g., a protein containing 10000 or 100000 atoms. It is quite possible that the polarizability per atom or maybe per unit volume of alkanes is record high, but this must be clarified, because, as it stands, this statement refers to the polarizability per molecule. So, even though this statement is taken from an organic chemistry textbook, it must be either corrected or removed. I suggest who wrote it checks and corrects it, but I'll come back in a few weeks, and revise it myself if nobody does. Thanx! Nicola.Manini (talk) 09:18, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

Expunged paper

The following short scientific paper was appended to the article some time ago. While it's interesting work it is simply not appropriate for an encyclopedia. Perhaps the conclusions merit reference in the text?

Mschuma3, article talk pages should not be used by editors as platforms for their personal views on a subject. I have removed the excessively long text in Special:Diff/906137531. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 21:57, 13 July 2019 (UTC)

Tendencies

In the "Tendencies" paragraph, it states that

Generally, polarizability increases as the volume occupied by electrons increases. In atoms, this occurs because larger atoms have more loosely held electrons in contrast to smaller atoms with tightly bound electrons. On rows of the periodic table, polarizability therefore increases from left to right.

However, that is incorrect; the the largest atom within the period is the alkali metal and the smallest is the noble gas, as periodic table page lists under trends. Should this be corrected to say "polarizability increases from right to left," or did I just not understand this correctly? KingisNitro (talk) 15:24, 4 February 2018 (UTC)