Alloy
Please post your comments and suggestions for this article.
Comment by Karen Katayama on January 8th, 2009 at 11:43 pm
Jenny Tanabe suggested I check out the New World Encyclopedia. As a teacher, I use Wikipedia almost daily, so I thought I would try it. The presentation (home page) is good. However there is no search engine readily apparent. One of the other pages refers to a search engine somewhere in the middle of a paragraph, but there is no “search” box to use. If you actually want to make this encyclopedia usable by many people, please install a search engine!! The alphabetical arrangement of articles is great addition but you need a way to “jump” to a given letter of the alphabet rather than paging down hundreds (thousands) of entries.
Just randomly, the article on Alloys was very good. The article on Transition Metals was good but if you are really going to make this a research encyclopedia for “normal” people, then reconsider the diagram of transition elements near the top of the page. The remaining periodic table is not in this diagram. It makes it difficult to place the transition elements in your mind unless you are already VERY familiar with the entire periodic table. If you go further down the page, the entire periodic table is there but the transition elements are not marked off especially. I would suggest, in the top diagram, to place the remainder of the table in its proper place (in light gray or blue) with the transition elements plainly visible in bold colors or print superimposed on rest of the table.
I will keep checking out the New World Encyclopedia. It looks like a great move towards the future of Internet based research.
Comment by Dinshaw Dadachanji on January 9th, 2009 at 6:02 pm
Thank you for your comments. My responses are below.
* The encyclopedia DOES have a search engine. There is a search box near the top right corner of the page, on the same line as the article title.
* Happy to hear that you like the article on Alloy.
* Your point about showing the placement of the transition metals in the periodic table was a good one. I have added an image of the full, color-coded periodic table to the article “Transition metal.” Hope that meets your concern. Our earlier decision not to include this image was based on the view that readers who wanted to find out the location of the transition metals in the periodic table could simply click on the hyperlink to “periodic table.”
— Dinshaw Dadachanji
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