Wikijunior talk:Solar System/Mercury

From Wikibooks, the open-content textbooks collection

Sources

• w:Mercury (planet) -- General data
• w:Mercury (mythology)
• NASA -- Nasa overview
• NASA kid's site -- Some trivia
• nineplanets.org -- More general data
• mathforum.org -- Weight data

Contents 1 Size of Mercury 2 Mythology 3 Orbital precession 4 How long is a year on this planet? 5 Mercury Facts 6 Needs reorganizing and more 7 "Fun facts" boxes 8 Image

[edit] Size of Mercury

I simplified the section on Mercury's size, thinking that our target audience wouldn't need three decimal places when comparing it to the Earth and moon. I changed it to "a little over a third as big as the Earth," and changed the moon comparison similarly. I also deleted the fifth significant figure for the size in km, figuring such percision unnecessary.

My version is not necessarily the best way to phrase it either, though, so feel free to edit as you will. --Asbestos 00:06, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Mythology

Though none of the other planet articles have expanded this section yet, I figured saying why a planet was named after a certain god was important. I've started changing it in this direction, feel free to expand.
On a completely unrelated note, I felt a little like Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes: "Mercury was a Roman God with winged feet... Why they named a planet after this guy, I can't imagine. Um... back to you, Susie..." --Asbestos 00:45, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I've also added a possible "Mythology box." Do people think such asides are good? -- Asbestos 20:52, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I love the Mythology Box! Such asides usually make it more interesting, especially in children's books. Lady~Macbeth 02:18, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Orbital precession

Is the concept of orbital precession too advanced for a book of this nature? As you probably know, in physics the precession of the orbit of Mercury is considered important as it helped confirm Einstein's theory of relativity. Historically people tried to explain the discrepancies in the rate of precession by predicting the existence of the planet Vulcan. (Which may be an interesting section all by itself.) — 130.76.32.15 14:55, 27 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Try to simplify (in this case really simplify) the issues and bring up the larger issues of being very close to a massive object like the Sun. Another place you could write up this issue in terms of relativistic effects could be in a supplimental article like the existing How was the Solar System born? article. These are planned to be a part of the appendix when the book is formally put together. Rob Horning 9 July 2005 11:00 (UTC)

[edit] How long is a year on this planet?

Wouldn't this sentence: "This means that an eight-year-old person would be 32 years old on Mercury."

suggests the reader that they will biologically age faster in Mercury? How about: "... would be 32 Mercury years"?

Sounds great -- go for it. --SV Resolution 17:37, 8 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Mercury Facts

• Mercury's surface temperature can vary from -300 °F (-180 °C) to 800 °F (430 °C). The hottest shade temperature ever felt on Earth was only 58 °C (136 °F)!

- mixed use in the same line of: xxx °F (yyy °C) - versus - xxx °C (yyy °F)
- dominand use on other Solar System pages seems(?) to be, xxx °C (yyy °F)
? making the (yyy °X) part slightly differ might make it a little more readeble. (whole book!)

That isn't "mixed use". It is consistent use of the logical and proper convention for expressing converted values: List the original first, followed by the converted value in parentheses. You can see from the roundness of the numbers that the degrees Fahrenheit are the likely originals. But we know that the 58 °C was originally made on the Celsius scale, in part because those are the only units of temperature for weather used where it was made. Metric1000 13:39, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

It is consistent use if you are aware of the rule that is applied. Not sure how I should have know this. (MvG)

I was just trying to point out that there are several different bases from which you can look at consistency, and they aren't always compatible with each other. You could certainly find publications which do follow an "English units first" or "metric units first" rule and things like that. I'm just arguing that the better position is "originals first", because, as pointed out below, that is often the best indicator of the precision of the original measurement, and also because, if an error has been made in conversion--which happens quite often, it is a clue as to which one is more likely correct. Metric1000 14:23, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

Note, however, for the stuff below as well, that the better and easier to read conversion style groups ranges of numbers:

• Mercury's surface temperature can vary from -300 °F to 800 °F (-180 °C to 430 °C). The hottest shade temperature ever felt on Earth was only 58 °C (136 °F).

Metric1000 13:55, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

Line Example: normal

• Mercury's surface temperature can vary from -180 °C (-300 °F) to 430 °C (800 °F). The hottest shade temperature ever felt on Earth was only 58 °C (136 °F)!

Line Example: italic

• Mercury's surface temperature can vary from -180 °C (-300 °F) to 430 °C (800 °F). The hottest shade temperature ever felt on Earth was only 58 °C (136 °F)!

Line Example: small

• Mercury's surface temperature can vary from -180 °C (-300 °F) to 430 °C (800 °F). The hottest shade temperature ever felt on Earth was only 58 °C (136 °F)!

Full Example's:

PS: considering the text in the side box is larger than normal text, the small text variant might become to small.

MvG

The second example is bad, because the rules say that symbols for units of measure can never be italicized.

Smaller numbers for he converted values is a bad idea.

As I said above, originals first! Metric1000 13:55, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

Italic: Aha, did not know that, but now I do. (MvG) now<now> O.o

Incorporating all of my suggestions, plus the &minus; symbol: Metric1000 14:08, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

While there aren't "rules" about use of symbols, there are "style" guidelines that suggest you may be correct. A good "style" suggestion as well is consistancy. If you are going to be quoting temperatures like this, be consistant with your units like this box:

Still, I like this one better, and is clean and to the point. Parenthesis tend to break up thoughts and reading, so grouping the concept of the range is a good one. I also agree that as a matter of style italics are inappropriate here. As a general style guideline as well, don't put in false precision when doing conversions between Imperial (American now?) units and Metric units. I hate it when you see something like 100 miles (160.94 km) when you were talking about a rough distance to somewhere. Instead it should be somewhat close in precision like 100 miles (160 km) where you can assume in this case +/- 10 km accuracy. Things like diameters of asteroids and moons generally only have about 2 digit accuracy anyway, and in some cases even the order of magnitude is a guess. --Rob Horning 17:27, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

I repeat, the consistency to strive for is originals first; not some artificial notion that some particular unit of measure should come first.

The reason for this has a lot to do with your point about precision. That temperature was originally measured as 58 °C, likely on a thermometer that only had the Celsius scale. Assuming that this was accurately measured to the nearest degree Celsius, it would be somewhere between 135.5 °F and 137.3 °F; to the nearest degree Fahrenheit, it might have been 136 °F or 137 °F.

However, if it is instead stated as 136 °F first, this creates the misleading impression that it was measured to the nearest degree Fahrenheit, and would be somewhere in the 57.5 °C to 58.1 °C range if accurately measured to greater precision.

Similarly, with the originals first in the other numbers, there are two logical choices for the precision of the conversion: either −300 °F to 800 °F (−200 °C to 400 °C) or −300 °F to 800 °F (−180 °C to 430 °C) would work, but if we can safely assume that the originals have been kept in the primary position, we have a better idea how precise those numbers actually are, no matter which conversion is used. Metric1000 20:41, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

Bye bye & GL. (MvG) (I would clean up, but u 2 are still talking)

We are not talking about a formal scientific journal, where the original numbers are of huge importance and it is critical that the original data is preserved (like real scientists never fudge the data anyway). This is a book for kids, for crying out loud. The consistancy is to deal with the cultural context of what units the kids may be familiar with, although even in the USA it is likly that the kids reading this are familiar with the metric system. If this were to be published in the EU as a primary target, it would be better if the temperature and distances listed would be in metric measurements first. The dual listing of imperial and metric units is done in part to help encourage a transition away from the imperial units, but use them when that is all the reader may be familiar with. --Rob Horning 14:39, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

In this particular case, the figures currently in the Wikipedia article are expressed in kelvins: 90 K minimum, 400 K mean, 700 K maximum, 103 K average night, 623 K average day (in at least the last two cases, there is a fairly good chance they are from originals in degrees Celsius, to the nearest 10 degrees).

Using those values as the originals, it is fine with me if it is expressed as (-180 °C to 430 °C (-300 °F to 800 °F). It is merely coincidence that rounding the degrees Fahrenheit to the nearest ten degrees gives us numbers divisible by 100. Metric1000 15:37, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Needs reorganizing and more

Despite the fact that all the tasks seem to have been checked off, this page looks like it needs some help. Can the proofreading page be essentially reset to start the proofreading process over again? I don't want to upset anyone by undoing their hard work, but looking at the dates and arguments, someone needs to be bold if any of these books are going to reach the finished stage.

Starchildmom 20:16, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "Fun facts" boxes

I quite liked the two boxes that used to be in this article (which can be seen in this version). They were removed by User:Shanel with no explaination. I'm not sure if the problem was the formatting (they took up a bit of room when there was very little on the page), but I think that these articles ought to include such things, especially as having the exact same structure in every article in the series can be fairly boring. — Asbestos | talk (not signed in), 21:02, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Image

The classical depiction of Mercury was removed by User:Starchildmom. I think that either it or a similar image should go back. Are we trying to make this article as dry as possible? — Asbestos | talk (not signed in), 21:08, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

The images have been removed due to some discussion that they detract rather than enhance from the content here. While classical art is interesting, and the names of many bodies of the Solar System are based on ancient mythology, this is not an art history book. Notably the images of Europa and Neptune were borderline pornographic, and either we need to get something a tad bit more conservative or simply leave them out. This isn't fighting NPOV, but rather that we want to allow this content to the widest possible audience. I agree that a classical depiction of Mercury would be useful, so if you know of some images that we could use to represent these greek gods that are 1) availble under GFDL-compatable licenses, 2) are otherwise culturally neutral in their appearance and 3) fairly consistent within the set between one diety and another. That is also the importantce of each point, I would add, but it seemed as though point #2 was failing with some of these images, and none of the images seemed to show any consistancy of any sort on point #3. If you are an artist, would you want to give it a try? --Rob Horning 23:06, 18 April 2006 (UTC)