Wikipedia:Peer review/Carbon-14/archive1

Carbon-14

Article (edit | visual edit | history) · Article talk (edit | history) · Watch • Watch peer review

A script has been used to generate a semi-automated review of the article for issues relating to grammar and house style; it can be found on the automated peer review page for October 2008.

This peer review discussion has been closed.
I've listed this article for peer review because I believe it is a very interesting article. The important fact all appear to be well referenced. The subject is quite interesting because it has some good links to other articles such as radioactive contamination. Finally, the footnotes and references appear well located. I would like to see this as a featured article.

Thanks, CyclePat (talk) 21:58, 20 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comments ErikvDijk

In lead: "The activity of the modern radiocarbon standard[4]is about 14 disintegrations per minute (dpm) per gram carbon [5]." Is this sentence really necessary in the lead? I don't understand what it means without further context.
Last two paragraphs in "Origin and radioactive decay of carbon-14" are only one sentence long.
In "Carbon-14 and fossil fuels" there is a something wrong with the partenses in the sentence "... to match the 10-15 14C/C measured[8])".

ErikvDijk (talk) 19:06, 29 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Finetooth comments: This is an interesting article about an isotope that most people have heard of but probably do not understand and could not explain. It would be great to have an encyclopedia article that explained it so clearly that most readers would comprehend the basics. Here are a few suggestions of a general-reader sort. You might seek further comments from specific editors listed in the natural sciences subsection of WP:PRV.

The lead should be a summary or abstract of the whole article. Somebody in a hurry should be able to read the lead by itself and get the gist of the article. The existing lead does not summarize the article. Ideally, the lead should include at least a mention of the ideas developed in the main text sections, and it should not include material that is undeveloped in the main text. Please see WP:LEAD.

Much of the article is or appears to be unsourced. For example, it's hard to tell at first glance whether citation 6 covers the whole "Origin and radioactive decay" section or only the last sentence. A good rule of thumb is to source every paragraph and every claim that might be questioned. This would include quantitative claims. Where do the numbers come from?

In the "Fossil fuels" section, it's not clear why contamination by bacteria or uranium might be important. ~~Maybe what is lacking is a statement saying that carbon dating of fossil fuels is fraught with uncertainty because..."~~
- Much later, I remembered this second sentence of mine and thought it made no sense. I added the strike marks today. Finetooth (talk) 16:00, 4 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I see lots of possibilities for expansion. For example, most people will be familiar with tree-ring dating, but they are unlikely to know anything about cave-deposit dating. You could explain this. You could also say why tooth-dating only works for people born after 1943 and not, say, 1942. Ditto for lens-dating and 1950. The connection between a seafood diet and lens-dating is not obvious. You could explain it.

The MOS frowns on orphan paragraphs consisting of only one or two sentences. You can fix the problem by combining short paragraphs or expanding them. This has the nice side effect of sometimes reducing the number of citations you need to consider adding.

The Manual of Style (MOS) recommends against using words in the section heads that "explicitly refer to the subject of the article". I'd suggest dropping the "Carbon-14" parts of three section heads and simply using "Origin and radioactive decay", "Fossil fuels", "Nuclear tests" and "Human body".

Dates in the main text are no longer autoformatted. I ran a script to unlink them in this article. Please see MOS:SYL.

I hope you find these comments helpful. If so, please consider reviewing another article, especially one from the PR backlog. That is where I found this one. Finetooth (talk) 19:04, 30 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comments

Please add a history section (even if it ends up being short)
Discuss/present the nuclear spin
perhaps say something about the occurrence vs sunspot cycles
are there any other uses outside the radiocarbon dating?

Nergaal (talk) 21:54, 12 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]