h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Entry: Chemical Bonding - Secondary School Content - A87913371
Author: Rujak - U15002343

Any comments on this would be greatly appreciated! I think I have pretty well cleared up the comments from the original article (A87721743. Let me know if I have missed anything or accidentally broken anything!

Here are some links to the old article and peer review thread.
Article: A87721743
Peer review thread: T8285254

Please delete the 's' in 'https' since it does not work in Ripley.

Hi Rujak and welcome to Peer Review!

One thing I have learned during my years here is: if talking about anything, anything at all, always assume your readers are completely clueless. You may write this Entry for secondary schools but other people who are long out of school may also read this. And they may not remember a lot.

So, there are a lot of questions to answer in your Entry (and please do not despair):

You talk about metals and non-metals. How are they defined?

I think the way you explain orbitals is not completely correct, even if you may mean the right thing it does not come across right. (and please do not copy exactly what I say here, I'm not a native speaker and also my last Chemistry lesson was about 15 years ago) You should start with explaining that each atom consists of a core and orbitals of electrons around it. Depending on the number of electrons that an atom has it also has more or less orbitals. Also each orbital can contain a different number of electrons (as you say in your description).

'these orbitals are devided into four blocks'... sorry, that sounds kind of wrong. Aren't the elements devided into four blocks and in which block they are depends on their orbitals? Maybe I got something wrong.

Your list of the different orbitals makes it sound like each element only has one single orbital that you list, although in the end you talk about 'exterior orbital'. You should maybe start by explaining how the atomic orbital model works, and start by explaining right at the beginning. As I said, don't expect your readers to have a clue.

Maybe explain 'electronig stability' and 'electronic charge' of atoms.

I don't really understand the footnote about dipoles. All in all you should probably reduce the number of footnotes you have and include as much as possible in the regular text.

When you talk about metals and conductivity I am not sure most people will know what you mean with 'vibrational energy'.

A not about pictures:
NEVER assume wikipedia pictures to be open-source. They may pretend that they are, but wikipedia is not a trustworthy site in this respect. If you want specific pictures on your Entry you should try to search for something that is really open-source or you draw it yourself. Otherwise you have to hope we (the artists) manage to draw exactly what you want and we have very few volunteers in this department, so we really appreciate writers who draw things themselves (if they can), especially if specific pictures are needed for an Entry.

That's it for now, I may come back to this later.

Here's the link to the original Entry A87721743 - the Peer Review conversation is F22118259?thread=8285254

Welcome to Peer Review Rujak - thanks for taking on this Flea Market rescue and bringing your expertise to h2g2

Excellent introduction - a great improvement on the original, so it is clear what the Entry is about

I studied Chemistry at secondary school quite some years ago now and I think this is a good overview of the subject that refreshes my memory nicely and has also taught me new things that follow on from what I already knew

I struggled with the 'electric dipole' footnote - is that something like the Earth has two poles, and there is a magnetic gradient from south to north?

"Each individual metal atom will effectively remove its outer shell of electrons such that they can flow freely throughout the entire lattice. " - I think this sentence could be tweaked just to make it clear that it is the electrons that flow freely.

I enjoyed the description of metals and their alloys - I did my PhD on the mathematics of structures arising from Quasicrystals A6582675 and my pet example was an alloy of aluminium that is used to make non-stick frying pans!

Good example of the mixing of oil and water - I can visualise that

Excellent conclusion - sums up the Entry and points the reader towards further information if this introduction left them wanting more

SashaQ - h2g2 Guide Editor

Thank you both Tavaron and Sasha!

In regards to the images I've decided to go ahead and make some since they are a bit tedious to make and I should probably have them in general anyways. I'm most of the way through making the periodic tables but they should be the most difficult.

After I get them done I'll go back and incorporate the suggestions but for the moment I'll try and respond to most of the comments.

For Tavaron's comments:

I definitely understand about readers either not having seen the information before and quite possibly not remembering it. I was considering if the information such as definitions for metals/nonmetals, atomic orbitals, and electric charge/dipoles should be in this article or the Atoms and Isotopes article(A87762171</a&gt. If I had been smart I probably would have started with that one so that I could link at the beginning of this one to it. Whichever way everyone thinks is better works for me, I just wasn't sure which way I should go. Also I will try and cut down on the footnotes, I wasn't sure exactly how to add most of it in since they are generally tangential to the main ideas but I'll do my best!

Thank you for the input! I'll keep them in mind and see exactly how I want to go about it after I finish up with the images.

For Sasha's comments:

Thanks for putting in the links! I am still getting used to things a bit. I'm glad you found it a good review and I'll definitely be clarifying the electric dipole information in one way or another. Very cool article on the Quasicrystals! I hadn't every really dealt with them before but I will have to look at them some more! I'll make sure to reword the part about electrons flowing in metals.

Thank you for the input as well! Hopefully I can get all the suggestions added in soon.

Thanks again for the assistance, I'll post again soon when I have the images. If either of you have opinions on whether I should add the base atomic information to this article or the dedicated article on it would be greatly appreciated!

About the images: please remember our standard image size is 400x300 px either portrait or landscape (so if you should draw anything by hand keep a 3:4 ratio). If you have troubles fitting the periodic table in that we can fit up to 600 px width on the page.

I generally always try that each Entry is understandable when read on it's own but I know it's difficult sometimes.

Thank you for doing some images for us - good luck with that The Entry will definitely be improved with diagrams as 'pictures tell a thousand words'

Links can be added in later, so that's no problem that you're doing this one first. I thought it flowed quite well, that the bonds in molecules have impact on the large scale structures so you've included the necessary definitions However, your introduction could be tweaked to be even clearer - some mention of atoms and molecules before your bullet point list would clarify what chemical bonding relates to

You include good examples in the bullet point list, which I think helps for people who vaguely know what metal is without having to go into technical detail, but I wonder if there is something brief you can add to answer the question Tavaron had when reading that...

By the way, for links in conversations you don't need to use href tags - just the (http) link is enough and the system turns it clickable. To link to Entries in h2g2 in a conversation, you just need the A-number, eg A6672963 will be a good one for you to refer to in your Entry, as may A1011899

Keep up the good work!

I've a dreadful feeling that Rujak has . Are you still here, Rujak?
If we don't hear from you by the end of the year I propose Flea Market.

<BB<

We heard from Rujak on 21 November so if Rujak doesn't check in by the end of this week, a reminder can be deployed

Rujak still hasn't posted since July... ?

<BB<

Sorry the reminder was not deployed before Christmas after all, but it has been deployed now

No sign of Rujak since November and no response to the reminder last week Looks like

In that case I'd like to propose <./>writing-fleamarket</.>

<BB<

Seconded