Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Centrifugal force (planar motion)

Centrifugal force (planar motion)

Centrifugal force (planar motion) (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) (delete) – (View log)

This article is scoped, defined and edited to be purely and simply a Content fork of Centrifugal force (rotating reference frame). It consists of material that was deleted from that original article. - (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 22:52, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

This AfD requires an expert in the subject. Schmidt, ^{MICHAEL Q.} 23:23, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

I am opposed to deletion; this article is not a content fork; see the discussion below and look at the article itself. There is very little overlap, neither in topics, nor figures, nor equations. Brews ohare (talk) 00:03, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

Yes, well, since you wrote it, you would be opposed. The reason there's no overlap is because the material was removed from the original article, by consensus. There may be ways to keep material within the wikipedia, but a simple content fork which overlaps in scope with the original article isn't one of them.- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 16:17, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

The usage of the term Centrifugal force is synonymous with the main article. Under the wikipedia policies articles that are on synonymous usages should be merged see: Wikipedia:Wikipedia is not a dictionary. Here, because the material was removed from the original article, you can't do that. So the article should be deleted or made not to be a content fork.- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 16:20, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

Keep The content of the article Centrifugal force (planar motion) is in no way a duplication of the companion articles on this subject. It concerns the details of describing centrifugal effects upon particle motions as observed from a variety of inertial and non-inertial frames of reference, and using a variety of coordinate systems (arc-length, polar, Cartesian, curvilinear). It also provides guidance to a good deal of cited work.

In contrast, the companion article Centrifugal force (rotating reference frame) deals very specifically with centrifugal force as observed in reference frame rotating around a fixed axis. That's it.

To simply delete Centrifugal force (planar motion) would eliminate a good deal of useful material from Wikipedia not available elsewhere. To combine it with Centrifugal force (rotating reference frame) would make that article much longer, and make it cover a wider range of topics.

In addition, Centrifugal force (planar motion) addresses the Lagrangian formulation of the problem (which applies to very general coordinate systems) and points out that "generalized" fictitious forces differ from plain old Newtonian fictitious forces, a point that has caused some debate on talk pages.

I am inclined to think Wolfkeeper does not grasp the issues here. Brews ohare (talk) 00:01, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

The article is about fictitious forces acting in a rotating reference frame. This is synonymous with that covered at the original article Centrifugal force (rotating reference frame). Under the policy WP:Wikipedia is not a dictionary synonymous definitions are merged into a single article.- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 00:52, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

I think it is pretty clear from the article and from what was said above that the article Centrifugal force (planar motion) is not about fictitious forces in a rotating reference frame. It is about observation of a moving particle in planar motion. It can be viewed from a variety of frames. In contrast, the examples in Centrifugal force (rotating reference frame) describe motion as seen strictly from a rotating frame, and, moreover, that article is devoted to objects in uniform circular motion, not in general planar motion. Brews ohare (talk) 04:32, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

I don't see that we are reading the same article that is up for deletion. The lead says, and I quote: The centrifugal forces considered here arise when observing a moving particle from several different non-inertial frames. So, unless your centrifugal force that the article is supposed to be about is to do with a non-inertial frame that doesn't rotate(!!!!), then that's exactly opposite to what the article itself claims. Therefore, I simply cannot reconcile your comments with what the article's lead itself claims.- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 04:57, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

Wolfkeeper: The article lead says "This article describes the centrifugal force that acts upon objects in planar motion when observed from non-inertial reference frames."

I believe you have adopted a very narrow meaning for "planar motion" and for "non-inertial frames" that is far more restricted than these terms imply, and also far narrower than the subject of the article. If you find this lead is unclear, the debate should be over modifying the lead, not over deleting the article because you have misconstrued its subject. Your remarks seems to imply that you think all non-inertial frames are rotating. Yes, the article discusses (in part) a non-inertial frame that doesn't rotate (!!!!) Please don't get rhetorical here. This is a serious matter. Brews ohare (talk) 05:34, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

Well, I simply believe you've done a content fork, and you're trying not to get it removed. The scope of the article as defined in the lead overlaps almost completely with centrifugal force (rotating reference frame) and the article body mostly contains the fraction of the material that was removed from there.- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 16:15, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

Delete The less articles on centrifugal force the better. There are some issues to be discussed regarding what Brews has said. There is the issue of the fact that there are situations in which a centrifugal force is claimed to exist from the perspective of a rotating frame of reference, yet where no such centrifugal force exists from the perspective of polar coordinates in the inertial frame. Agreement may never be reached on whether such a centrifugal force does actually exist or not in the rotating frame in that scenario. But the issue should be discussed on the talk page of a unified article. There will probably be fringe sources supporting both points of view, and a consensus may be reached to avoid the controversy altogether since the mainstream textbooks tend to be silent on that issue. The overall aim should be to have one drastically simplified article with distinct sections, and to minimize, but not necessarily eliminate the mention of Coriolis force and Euler force. David Tombe (talk) 01:20, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

There is some dispute, and it would be great to resolve it. I don't think the best approach to resolution is to delete pages that are inconvenient for some participants in the discussion. Brews ohare (talk) 04:32, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

Comment. IMHO the centrifugal force article(s) on Wikipedia have grown excessively due to long-standing disputes and maybe a bit of original research. Perhaps a better solution would be to write a wikibook on centrifugal force and try to write one concise encyclopedic article for Wikipedia. --Itub (talk) 07:59, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

• Note: This debate has been included in the list of Science-related deletion discussions. -- the wub "?!" 11:27, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

We need to identify the key areas of conflict. I can point to at least three of these,

(1) The issue of whether the fictitious forces as derived for the purposes of rotating frames have restrictions on their applicability. I have suggested that the terms only apply to situations in which the objects in question possess the same actual rotation as the rotating frame itself. In other words, any actual effect arises from actual rotation.

(2) There is the issue concerning the fact that centrifugal force becomes inertia when we use Cartesian coordinates. I have been advocating that polar cordinates are the only realistic way of describing the centrifugal force effect.

(3) There is the issue of what has been described in these articles as 'reactive centrifugal force'. It is a knock on effect, just as weight is to gravity. Some have argued that since reactive centrifugal force doesn't act on the same object as centrifugal force, then they must be something completely different, deserving of two separate pages. I would say that the so-called reactive centrifugal force would show up implicitly in any coherent and well written article on centrifugal force without the need to even bring attention to the concept in its own right.

The aim should be for a united article, and all discussions towards that end should be on the talk page of centrifugal force (rotating frames of reference) since that is the page from which all the forks emerged, and since that is the page that google hits direct us to.David Tombe (talk) 14:52, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

David: You raise some interesting points that require attention, but all that matters for this particular debate is this very specific question: "Is Centrifugal force (planar motion) a content fork of Centrifugal force (rotating reference frame)?" There is, in fact, no basis for considering it a content fork. For example,

1. The above link to Wiki definition of forking says: it is generally acceptable to have different levels of detail of a subject on different pages, provided that each provides a balanced view of the subject matter.

There can be little doubt that the level of discussion is more mathematical and more detailed on Centrifugal force (planar motion) than on Centrifugal force (rotating reference frame).

2 .The above link to Wiki definitions says: Articles on distinct but related topics may well contain a significant amount of information in common with one another. This does not make either of the two articles a content fork.

There may be some overlap between the articles, but the amount of overlap is way below "significant". For example, Centrifugal force (planar motion) deals with the non-inertial frame attached to the moving particle and with the co-rotating frame. Each of these examples brings out a very important aspect of centrifugal force for planar motion not addressed in the other article. Another example, Centrifugal force (planar motion) discusses a variety of coordinate systems, including the arc-length and curvilinear coordinate systems. The other article does not. Centrifugal force (planar motion) contains Figures not in the other article, illustrating points not raised in the other article.

In short, this motion to delete on the basis of Centrifugal force (planar motion) being a content fork of Centrifugal force (rotating reference frame) is groundless. Brews ohare (talk) 15:22, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

The article was only created after material was removed from the primary article, and largely consists of material that was removed by consensus from there. That's a content fork. Content forks are highly undesirable in the wikipedia, and I strongly encourage everyone to vote for the removal.- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 16:12, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

Keep. I think this article is an excellent supplement to the existing articles on classical mechanics. We should all be grateful to Brews Ohare for willing to spend so much time and effort here to write physics articles.

I don't understand why the "content forking" issue is seen as a problem. Content forking is only a problem if someone's edits are deleted because the edits are wrong, not if they are too technical for the article. In this case, you don't want to write in an introductory article about centrifugal force about the Lagrangian approach, certainly not about the formalism of differential geometry.

However, the Lagrangian formalism is the standard formalism to solve problems in classical mechanics. No one I know actually uses the cumbersome formalism presented in the wiki article about fictitious force for anything but the simplest cases, except perhaps if you are a first year physics student doing his homework.

Wikipedia should be a place where an interested high school student should be able to read an article about fictitious force at his/her level, and it should be a place where a physics student can read an article that explains how one can write down the equations of motion for a particle moving in a rubber tube that is moving and deforming in some arbitrary way. Count Iblis (talk) 15:49, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

So, if I understand you correctly, you agree that this is a content fork. You also seem to say that a high school student should be able to read the article, but I wasn't aware that Lagrangians were really high school level material.- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 16:05, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

My concerns are that the article was only created when material was removed from the centrifugal force and follows none of the norms for content forks that are outlined at WP:Content forking#What content/POV forking is not, and is not on any well-defined encyclopedic topic, and the introduction reads like a content fork when you compare it with the original article.- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 16:05, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

No, what I'm saying is that wikipedia should have articles at different levels suitable for people ranging from complete lay persons to profdessional physicists. Should we delete an article useful to students just because there exists an article on the same topic, but which is written for kindergarten level students? Count Iblis (talk) 16:55, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

We're not supposed to invent terms just to keep professional physicists happy, no. This is an encyclopedia which is primarily intended for a general audience, not a highly specialised one. If there are aspects of the topic that are especially complex they need to go in subarticles or be referred out to a full treatment where that's more appropriate, not by creating content forks and pretending that they're new topics entirely.- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 17:26, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

Hey, keeping a professional physicist happy is tougher than inventing terms. :-) You appear to be recommending creation of a broad summary page referring out to several branch articles. That would supplement the existing disambiguation page, and be linked by it, right? Brews ohare (talk) 18:14, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

Key question – I haven't studied the citation or this discussion yet enough to know if it has been addressed, but I think the key question is whether the distinction between these two articles is a distinction that can be found in a reliable source. Can someone point out a source that makes such a distinction, as opposed to just different sources that adopt diffferent approaches to centrifugal force? Dicklyon (talk) 16:25, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

I really, really doubt that there's anything like that out there that says that there's distinct sorts of centrifugal force 'planar' and 'non planar'.- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 16:37, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

This is a key question. Wiki guidelines say: Summary style articles, with sub-articles giving greater detail, are not content forking, provided that all the sub-articles, and the summary conform to Neutral Point of View. Maybe some such summary style article is needed? Brews ohare (talk) 17:42, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

Possibly, but this isn't. It's simply a content fork.- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 17:54, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

• Provisional Keep My own comment above was this rather involved article would require the attention of an expert in the field, as I am unable to read/understand the article and make a determination as to whether the content is accurate or not. But that flaw is my own and not the article's, as I am not an advanced mathematician. But I did not know that Wiki was designed with the goal of being understood by high school students. I would think that like any encyclodia, if a subject being covered requires the language and explanations of that subject matter, as long as it is accurate and sourced it may be included. Again, this requires the attention of experts in that field... and hopefully such experts will come forward and qualify theeir expertise when making an educated comments. If the author states that it is not a content fork, I will assume good faith that it is not so. That it contains informations removed from a seperate article, should not defacto make it a fork, as the language of mechanical physics is universal to the subject. As for "content forking", I am of the opinion if a parent article was so lengthy and in-depth that informations were removed in the interest of simplicity/clarity/length, it would make sense to then have a second article that covered the removed informations if they were important enough to merit aa seperate article. Not using any specific WP:WAX, there are satelite articles for other subjects that cover aspects of their parent articles. This may well be the same. But again, I do not have the technical expertise to know one way or the other. My keep is "provsional" as I watch this AfD. The article does not look or feel like a hoax. It is well sourced. In the field of mechanical or astrometric physics it may be a notable as Tom Crise's latest film. Perspective gentlemen... perspective. Schmidt, ^{MICHAEL Q.} 16:38, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

The problem is that it's not advertising or describing itself as a satellite of the main article, it's saying that it's a different sort of centrifugal force. But it self evidently is not that.- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 16:48, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

Your objection might be met by rewriting the intro. The article Centrifugal force (planar motion) is not intended to indicate it deals with a fundamentally different kind of centrifugal force; its intention is to deal with the determination of the centrifugal force for the case of general planar motion as seen from a variety of non-inertial frames. Maybe an analogy is finding the bandwidth in two different amplifier designs: bandwidth is still bandwidth, but its dependence on the circuit variables is different. For example, in a frame attached to the particle, centrifugal force is related to the center of curvature of the path; in a co-rotating frame it is related to the distance of the particle from the origin of the frame. Brews ohare (talk) 17:05, 11 October 2008 (UTC).

I can't actually find any connection between the lead and the body, they actually talk about different things. The body is just material removed from the main article, and the lead is just the original lead with a few words changed here and there to make the content fork less obvious. Apparently a lot of people are being taken in by this ruse.- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 17:49, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

The lead is not the issue; the content of the article is the issue, and it is not a content fork according to the directly quoted excerpts from content fork. Brews ohare (talk) 18:06, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

Keep: It seems to me like Centrifugal force (rotating reference frame) is about the centrifugal force that comes about in a uniformly rotating reference frame, and Centrifugal force (planar motion) is about the centrifugal force in reference frames in general motion. The second is more general, the first is simpler and more often used. Sure, I think there's room for improvement in explaining the scope and divvying up the content of both articles, but I don't think deletion is called for. --Steve (talk) 17:33, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

Unfortunately for this theory, the original article covers non uniformly rotating reference frames as well, and does it in 3-space, whereas this one only covers the bits that were removed, and only then in 2D.- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 17:49, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

No material has been created that deals with particle motion on 3-D space curves; of course, it could be done, but involves some additional vectors and concepts from differential geometry. I doubt that added complexity would affect your point of view positively. 2-D planar motion is a half-way house. Brews ohare (talk) 18:06, 11 October 2008 (UTC)