Talk:Lead

Infobox

Some of us discussed the elem & chem infobox earlier, and seemed to agree, that the last thing we ever wanted was a really long elem infobox or chem infobox. In other words, only the key things should be in, with the idea that other physical attributes could be put in the article or under a separate subpage. A really long infobox leads to a bad layout for articles. Note all of the white space in this article at the top. I think you will find fair resistance to changing the chem and elem infobox to be this inclusive. An alternative might be to have a physical properties infobox later in the article in a physical properties section where things like boiling pts and crystal structure forms, UV-vis, NMR, refraction, etc could be placed. David E. Volk 16:06, 31 March 2008 (CDT)

There's actually a discussion which I hope you would have found on the talk page of this particular template in use; I meant to post it to the chemistry workgroup page but there didn't seem to be that much activity there. Please weigh in. --Robert W King 16:10, 31 March 2008 (CDT)

Mr Volk: The white space came from not including the TOC placement, not from the infobox itself, but note there is nothing from preventing an author from including an arbitrarily large amount of info in either infobox.

All: Part of what I was trying to do is to eliminate the "placeholder" (read as "empty space on the screen that a header says should contain information") for info that was not included in the article. Please see for example the Carbon Infobox, in the Hazards or Properties section). Perhaps including these headers with no info is not what we want. Also, if it's a pretty layout you're after, we should consider a "keepout" for article text that surrounds the box. The text in articles that use the original Elem_Infobox looks kinda crammed up against it IMHO...--David Yamakuchi 14:41, 1 April 2008 (CDT)

Does anybody know a way (besides photoshop) to make somethng like this happen (see right)?--David Yamakuchi 02:16, 5 April 2008 (CDT)

Yes but it may not work within an infox box and worse might mess up some browsers. See here for an example. Chris Day 07:45, 5 April 2008 (CDT)

Temporary commenting out

I've temporarily commented out the infobox, because it is just not ready for implementation. --Robert W King 10:55, 1 April 2008 (CDT)

OK, how 'bout something more like this...CZ:Sandbox2?--David Yamakuchi 14:41, 1 April 2008 (CDT)

That's better. A few minor comments: label all the numbers (use small font for the labels if you have to); I can guess what the "207.2" and "82" are, but I'm not sure everyone can (and no, having them hyperlinked isn't enough, although it's a good idea). Ditch "Electronegativity", it's too obscure. Would "boiling point" be useful instead?

Also, once this is up, we can lose most of the "Lead has the symbol Pb (from the latin Plumbum) while its atomic number is 82." from the intro; it's duplicative, and not a good use of that space. Maybe just "Its chemical symbol Pb is derived from the latin Plumbum." J. Noel Chiappa 15:22, 1 April 2008 (CDT)

I wouldn't label the numbers. It will make the swatch more distracting, because you have to make it bigger in order to read them. Some kind of solution needs to go in, I'm just not sure what it is yet. --Robert W King 15:34, 1 April 2008 (CDT)

OK, we seem to agree that the numbers in the box need to be identified. I tried for hours to get text in there without making the box bigger...unsuccessfully. The hyperlink seemed like a reasonable alternative, and we can do it from the Template too CZ:Sandbox...--David Yamakuchi 16:20, 1 April 2008 (CDT)

Isotopes and MSDS subpages

Did I break something? I cant seem to get these pages to load...--David Yamakuchi 14:33, 1 May 2008 (CDT)

US bias

The article states in the intro:

Prior to the early 1900's, uses of lead in the United States were primarily for ammunition, brass, burial vault liners, ceramic glazes, leaded glass and crystal, paints or other protective coatings, pewter, and water lines and pipes.

Was the use of lead different elsewhere in the world prior to 1900? Further down in the article, the content becomes even more US oriented. I find this odd in an article about something as international as a chemical element. --Paul Wormer 02:27, 10 July 2008 (CDT)

I am sure this is not deliberate and is probably left out because of a lack of information presented; I don't doubt that there are other uses of lead in the world, someone just needs to supply it. --Robert W King 21:49, 10 July 2008 (CDT)

The section on "lead" as a gasoline additive should be moved to a stand-alone article on tetra-ethlyl lead (TEL)

This article is intended to be about the element named lead with the symbol Pb. A very large portion of this article (about 35-40% of the article) is the section entitled "Lead as a fuel additive". The actual fuel additive was tetra-ethyl lead which is a liquid with the chemical formula of (CH₃CH₂)₄Pb commonly called TEL. It would be much more appropriate to have a stand-alone article devoted to TEL ... its history as gasoline additive, its health effects and its ultimate banning (in 1996) for use in the U.S.

In my opinion, this article should only include a {{main|Tetra-ethyl lead}} link to the stand-alone article ... and no more than a sentence or two about the fact that it is a fuel additive which was used in the U.S. from year X to year Y, when it was completely banned. After all, this is an article about lead ... not about TEL. Any comments? Milton Beychok 03:37, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Go for it. Chris Day 04:06, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Agreed. --Joe Quick 13:23, 23 April 2009 (UTC), Ro Thorpe 13:29, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

I have replaced the lengthy section about TEL with a very much shorter one. The deleted lengthy section is now in one of my sandboxes. I will modify it and create a new stand-alone article about TEL during next week. Thanks for the comments agreeing to this. Milton Beychok 18:15, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Better late than never ... I have now created the new stand-alone article Tetraethyl lead as promised. Milton Beychok 18:48, 15 May 2009 (UTC)