Talk:Physics

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Physics Top‑importance

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Science Top‑importance

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Mathematics Top‑priority

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Physics was one of the good articles, but it has been removed from the list. There are suggestions below for improving the article to meet the good article criteria. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.

Article milestones
Date	Process	Result
January 14, 2006	Good article nominee	Listed
August 15, 2006	Good article reassessment	Delisted
October 28, 2006	Articles for deletion	Speedily kept
May 22, 2009	WikiProject peer review	Reviewed
July 24, 2010	Peer review	Reviewed
April 1, 2012	Articles for deletion	Speedily kept
Current status: Delisted good article

21st century missing

In the History section, shouldn't there be a separate section about 21st-century physics? Because the 20th century section ends with the discovery of the Higgs boson, an option would be to rename "20th century" into "20th and 21st century".

Short description

Hi Johnjbarton, I am reasonably familiar with the guidance on short descriptions, and do not see how "Scientific field of study" is a better navigational aid than "Study of matter, energy, forces and motion", particularly when Physics is listed along with assorted other scientific fields of study, as can and does happen (and is why I was motivated to change it to a less ambiguous version). Perhaps you could explain your reasoning. Cheers, · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk):

Sections of History on "Classical" and "Modern"

The two subsections of History, "Classical" and "Modern" need work. In my opinion they fail to express the history of physics. If we scale the content of the History section to the impact on physics, all of the other subsections combined would amount to two sentences. As they appear here, the bulk of physics, occurring as it did in the 19th and 20th centuries, looks like an after thought.

I think the solution is to do just that: cut all of the pre-Classical content to a summary section and add summary sections to the Classical and Modern based on the many histories of the subfields. I would rename "Classical" to "19th century" and "Modern" to "20th century" and place "Distinction between classical and modern physics" in "20th century". Johnjbarton (talk) 18:25, 6 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I did the renaming part of this. Johnjbarton (talk) 02:54, 8 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you. Indeed, it's better for Physics#History to be a streamlined version of History of physics. fgnievinski (talk) 02:53, 18 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Language tag

I added {{Use Oxford spelling}}. User Johnjbarton objected on grounds that language tags are "always" contentious, but did not base this objection in policy. Another user changed the tag to {{Use American English}} as per MOS:RETAIN. I have no objection to this. cagliost (talk) 06:33, 19 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for opening this topic. That is the right way to settle these dumb language issues. Contentious issues are settled on Wikipedia by Wikipedia:Consensus.

I agree with {{Use American English}} per MOS:RETAIN. I assume @ZergTwo agrees. Johnjbarton (talk) 15:33, 19 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I do. ZergTwo (talk) 23:59, 19 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]