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

Hi! I'm the Sub-ed responsible for mauling your entry 'The Measurement of Radioactivity' and the copy I'm working on is over at A2922671

I wouldn't pretend to the remotest level of qualification as to touching the actual facts of the entry and have confined myself to putting the boot in to the appearance of the article. What I am hoping you might do is to take a look and double check that none of the changes I've made have affected the facts! Incidently, if you have any disagreements about anything I've done (or not done), then please let me know and we can hopefully come to agreement on a better arrangement.

Hoping to hear from you soon, Wildman

Hi Wildman! Always glad to hear from ya, Sub! I have just a couple slight comments/corrections.

There's a problem with writing "plutonium238" the way it is in right now in the first paragraph of the first subheading. Actually, this is a technically erroneous way to write what I was trying to say, from a nuclear chemistry point of view. If one were to write it using a superscript, one would need to put the number "238" actually before the chemical symbol for plutonium (Pu). Or, if one wishes to refer to an isotope by using its full name, the accepted practice is to write it with a dash or small hyphen, as in "plutonium-238" (probably for reasons of how people actually say it, though to write 238-plutonium would still be technically correct, albeit confusing to many people). The reason has to do with what the number is referring to, in this case the total number of neutrons and protons in the nucleus of the particular isotope in question.

I'm very pleased 'cos you made it much more readable in general, and with the itemized and bulleted lists! Thanks, I'd never really figured out how to do that myself. I know, I need to read up on my GuideML, heh.

Under the subheading for "Becquerel," I've caught something that seems to be wrong to me, but lack the grammatical skills to be sure. I'd typed, "It is these cases where the unit becquerel is most commonly used." Is that goodspeak? Should it be, "It is in these cases ..." ? I dunno, I leave it up to you.

In the interests of being less USA-specific, maybe we could change the phrase, "the USA and others may have their own government agencies" to just, "individual nations in the EU, the Americas, and Asia..." I dunno, just a thought. Trying hard not to be so "American" here, you see.

Footnote 5 has a tense problem I just noticed, speaking of grammar. I think it should read, "...comes from the NRC and DOE that maintains and propogates ..." - a solution that, I fear, might make the sentence really long, but I'm famous for liking long sentences with too many commas, such as, for example, this one here (not to mention spurious parenthetical statements [even nested, from time to time]).

Oh, and there's the same problem as I first noted above with "plutonium239" - it needs to be superscript 239 right before a "Pu" symbol or just "plutonium-239" with no super/subscripting to be technically correct about what I'm saying.

There's a, "...let along making..." which should be "...let alone making..." in last sentence under the "how the units are used" subheading.

Thanks for all the work!

- JD

Thanks for the feedback, that's just what I wanted!

I've made the changes you suggested - except that I'd prefer to leave "the USA and others may have their own government agencies" as it is, it seems perfectly clear to me and there's no real reason to complicate things any further.

If this is OK with you, I can send this on to join the queue of entries waiting for the front page - but please feel free to tell me if there's anything else you might like changed, that's what I'm here for!

Wildman

Hi Wildman, it looks great to me!

- JD