Testwiki:Reading room/Archives/2003/November

Physics textbook

Ok, guys, I'd like to contribute to the physics book, but I'm not sure exactly what to do. The GFDL book that it links to seems a bit, well, if you don't mind me saying so, weird. I can't imagine most students being able to understand it in the way that book presents it...Maybe it's just me. :) Anyway, should I try to improve on the one there or maybe start another, more 'traditional' style physics book? What do you guys think? Etothex 05:23, 1 Nov 2003 (UTC)

There is so seldom more than one or two people here at any given time, it is "wierd" to have someone to talk to. Etothex ~ Go over to Talk:German: Lesson 3 for some discussion on that text. As for the Physics text, let me offer the following (I'm no expert on Physics, believe me): Is it possible that what you are calling "wierd" is really just the approach or arrangement of subjects within the text? If so (and I do not know), then your additions could be placed within the existing outline/text in appropriate places and help bridge gaps between approaches. In other words, before starting another text, consider whether the subject matter you would expound on is identical only just arranged more traditionally. If that is the only difference, you could add your stuff where appropriate and perhaps even develop a detailed outline in traditional form that links to the appropriate text pages in the existing "wierd" Physics text. Look over the Botany text. There, I am developing the text as mostly links to appropriate articles at Wikipedia with explanatory discourse where I think it is needed. You could do something similar for a traditional Physics textbook without resorting to writing a parallel text. - Marsh 05:39, 1 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Yeah, it's the order in which it's presented, like waves first. Then he presents velocity along with Sp. Relativity and acceleration with Gen. Relativity. I can understand sort of why they did that, though...With traditional physics texts, they present classical/newtonian physics first then say oops, newton wasn't quite complete/accurate, now here's relativity and quantum physics to iron that out. The 'radically modern' approach seems best for people taking physics who want to become scientists or engineers. Someone not going into those fields but who wants to take calculus based physics might find the traditional approach easier to understand, I think. I'm interested in seeing what the other guys say, too. Physics is a split subject, anyway. Usually there's a 'Physics for College' textbook, of algebra based physics, and 'Physics for Scientists' of calculus based physics. The 'Radically modern' physics text is calc based, so maybe I can write a algebra bases physics text. That way we're not overlapping. Etothex 05:58, 1 Nov 2003 (UTC)

You may be right. Two levels of text might be called for - Marsh 08:02, 1 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Server Issues and Other Wierdness

More problem with logging in

Since two or three days I can't log in anymore. After I type in my username and password I see myself logged in, but as soon as I go to a new page I am logged out again. This is really weird because for example Wikipedia is still working fine for me. Does any one know where this problem may come fron? Thanks Thomas Strohmann

look further up this page and you'll see the discussion we had about a couple of days ago. Log in to www.wikibooks.org instead of textbook.wikipedia.org. Theresa knott 11:27, 15 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Thanks Theresa, sorry that I didn't check that earlier. Thomas Strohmann

Wikibooks Namespace Issues

You may have noticed that the Wikibooks namespace is now active and some other changes have taken place. Please discuss additional changes below so that we can finish the localization process:

Known issues:

• The "Bulletin board" link in the sidebar points to a normal module page, not the Wikibooks namespace. A redirect has been created but it would be nice for this link to be direct. --mav 03:44, 11 Aug 2003 (UTC)
  • That would require a slight code change, but it could perhaps get done. --Brion VIBBER 07:29, 11 Aug 2003 (UTC)
• The "Bug reports" link in the sidebar correctly points to Wikibooks:Contact us but the displayed link text needs to be changed to "Contact us". --mav 03:44, 11 Aug 2003 (UTC)
  • Done. --Brion VIBBER 07:29, 11 Aug 2003 (UTC)
• The logo needs to be changed. --mav 04:42, 11 Aug 2003 (UTC)
  • Done. --Brion VIBBER 07:29, 11 Aug 2003 (UTC)
• Need a way to easily edit the text on top of special:recentchanges (wikibooks:recentchanges does not work). Same for Special:Booksources. --mav 04:48, 11 Aug 2003 (UTC)
  • Works fine now. --Brion VIBBER 07:29, 11 Aug 2003 (UTC)
• Something strange happened to Wikibooks:TeX markup, Wikibooks:Talk page and maybe others. They have been replaced by their talk pages with no trace. --mav
  • Fixed. --Brion VIBBER 07:29, 11 Aug 2003 (UTC)
• It looks like the Calculus page and Welcome to the organic chemistry textbook ! page are missing. -- Karl Wick
  • Fixed now.

Other issues/discussion:

TeX wierdness

I think there's some idiosyncracy with TeX markup and the Wiki software here (since I can't get the following problem reproduced at the Wikipedia), but if I create a <math> block which is commented out, an image is created for it, but it does not show, and the next following <math> tag's image is replaced by the previous. This is kinda difficult to explain: If I have

<!-- <math>\lambda^{\lambda^{\lambda}}</math> --> <math>x \sim y</math> <math>x \equiv y</math> , it will render as $x\sim y$ $x\equiv y$

Dysprosia

I've noticed that over at Wikipedia, too... Somewhere in Wikipedia:Sandbox's history... Not sure why you couldn't reproduce it, maybe Wikipedia changed since I did it... كсηפ Cyp 15:15, 23 Oct 2003 (UTC)