User talk:Milton Beychok

Milton Beychok

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 Where Milt lives it is approximately: 06:44

Guidance sought on Astrophysics article and creating a 'dating' article

Dear Milton: Thank you for the email notifications. John Brews has also left a pleasant note on my User talk page. It's a little intimidating observing the tremendous achievement among contributors, such as yourself and John. As a technician and later an engineer working night shift much of his professional life I cannot claim such distinction.

The Astrophysics article has an error which seems elementary to me, though. Discussing the density of ordinary and dark matter, it states in effect that $W_{B}+W_{D}<1\,$; essentially, that both put together aren't sufficient to close the universe. And yet it says this means that "if that is all there is, the universe would eventually stop expanding and collapse". Isn't this exactly the opposite of what's intended?

Most of my professional contributions related to analysis of other people's designs of boilers, pressure vessels etc. to the usual industry standards (ASME VIII,1 and BS5500). As such they are hardly original, though for lifts and cranes I actually wrote my own space frame code on an old HP 9845B; and now I think about it, a special bit of code which did a thin-plate finite element analysis of heat exchanger endplates. This was quite primitive by modern standards (I had to create the mesh by hand, for example).

Such computational shortcuts allowed me to certify some designs as safe - or otherwise, in the case of certain French cranes built to a Norme Française, which were probably perfectly designed but which were a bit too cutting edge for me. Either they weren't conformal with the usual ASME or BS standards, or there was some special threat (like earthquake or wind loading).

So I was at one time fairly technically proficient in my field(s) but except for the 1986 Lift (elevator) code for NZ, not the author of anything like a reference work. With one exception: I did actually once get co-opted into writing a paper jointly with two other gentlemen on carbon dating (I had skills in signal processing which they lacked). One project I had in mind when joining Citizendium was to write about the calibration stochastic distortion associated with nonlinearities in radiocarbon decay.

But there's no radiocarbon dating article I can add to! There is one in Wikipedia, though it's patchy. Should I create a new one?

Also, should I include a mathematical formula with LaTeX? When it comes to LaTeX my favourite shortcut is to import LaTeX into AbiWord but that converts it to MathML. Besides I've never created an article before, let alone one with equations in it.

--Terry Richard Linter Cole 10:18, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

Terry, I have no expertise whatsoever in astrophysics, so I cannot help you regarding the Astrophysics article. At the moment, I am very busy with other matters and I suggest that you contact John Brews with all of your above questions.

However, I will tell you that any mathematics should be either in LaTeX or html ... with LaTeX being preferable. Also, we have a policy against importing WP articles. So, if you want to write an article about radiocarbon dating, please create a new one.

Again, please contact John Brews with your above questions. You might also contact Daniel Mietchen who is one of our active Physics editors. Regards, Milton Beychok 15:03, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

You might to check these contributions

Milt I sent a message to a Constable to review these contributions but since you are online you might want to take a look. The contributions are from a new contributor so I am sure he needs a bit of guidance. See: [[1]] Thanks for checking this out. Mary Ash 04:30, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

Assistance on photographs´ authors

Regards, Mr. Beychok. I am the new man in the town, and I published the article White Argentine in this encyclopedia, and I uploaded many photos that are planned to appear in it. Most of them are from Wikipedia, and they are in Public Domain according to Argentine law. Nevertheless, I have found hard to get the name(s) of their author(s). For example, a very well know photo of F1 car racer [Juan Manuel Fangio taken in 1952]; I looked it up in a collection named "Photograph in Argentine History" published by Clarín newspaper from my country, where most photos had their sources and authors, and it displays the label "Unidentified author". In the case of photos taken from Argentina Presidency official site, they are all credited to the official photographer of the Casa Rosada, but there are others taken by anonymous contributors to Wikipedia whom I cannot get their names. Other photos of Argentine Presidents from the XIX century have a similar difficulty, for they only display the history book they were taken from, all the sources for ALL the photos appearing in that book. Other authors here adviced me to contact you for guidance. Thanks for your attention. --Pablo Martín Zampini 13:47, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

Pablo, I am sorry but I have too many other matters to attend to at the moment. Please discuss your problems with one of our Constables and ask them to contact Stephen Ewan who set up Citizendium's original policies on images imported from Wikimedia Commons. As I recall, his policy stated that we must obtain the real names of the image creators for any images imported from either Wikimedia Commons or from Flickr. Lacking a real name, then I would guess that the name of an entity like a U.S. government agency, a company name, a museum name, etc. should be sufficient.

I repeat, ask one of our Constables to contact Stephen Ewan ... or perhaps Larry Sanger, our original founder. I am fairly sure that the constables should be able to contact one of them. Milton Beychok 15:11, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

Apollo program

Hello hello. I actually happened to read about half the article few days ago because it was so well written. There was quite a bit of fun and excitement in seeing the story unfold in the context of the Cold War rivalry. I want to read all of it again, actually. Thank you. (Chunbum Park 12:05, 23 June 2011 (UTC))

Definition of 'billion' in Apollo program

Milton, Note #1 in Apollo program defines 'billion' as 10⁶. I just checked my American bank account balance and it reads 10⁹ for 'billion'. ;) Anthony.Sebastian 18:46, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, Anthony ... I goofed. Milton Beychok 19:01, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

BTW: I love what you've done with the Apollo program. Reads with grace, style, and coherence. I will continue to try adding a little value, just to be part of something great. Anthony.Sebastian 23:35, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

Have you looked at the gallery subpage? I could add more photos ... what do you think? Milton Beychok 00:03, 25 June 2011 (UTC)

Re Apollo program/Gallery

Milton, nice work with the gallery. Can you think of a way, in the main article, to either:

• link to a specific image, perhaps by number or image-specific tag, allowing referral to specific images throughout the text
• create a link that, with mouse-over, pops up the image in a small pop-up window, allowing reader to see an image to illustrate a text statement, obviating need to include image permanently in the article

I use Firefox as my default browser, with the 'Cool Previews' add-in. When I mouse-over a link, external or internal, Cool Previews gives an icon to click to pop-up the linked page in a pop-up small, sizable window that disappears when you roll out of it. You never leave the main article page. Anthony.Sebastian 02:43, 26 June 2011 (UTC)