Talk:Iodine

Can we get rid of this pending revisions thing? It is poorly documented and I don't know how to reject/accept/comment on these. Just plain protection is better IMO. Johnjbarton (talk) 18:09, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

Just noting that the {{use British English}} tag at the top and the spelling sulfur in the article conflict with each other. (Choosing my words carefully, to avoid specifying either as the correct one.)

I haven't checked whether the article as a whole is using British or American English—I just happened to come across a discussion about this particular spelling. Musiconeologist (talk) 14:14, 22 January 2025 (UTC)

@Musiconeologist: Wikipedia follows IUPAC's recommendations. Please see WP:SULF for the details. Favonian (talk) 14:49, 22 January 2025 (UTC)

@Favonian Ah, right. It's interesting that they recommend a mixture of US (sulfur) and UK (aluminium, caesium) spellings/names. Thanks! Musiconeologist (talk) 16:16, 22 January 2025 (UTC)

"The melting and boiling points of iodine are the highest among the halogens" Astatine? I'd suggest adding the word stable between latter two. ~2025-40371-64 (talk) 23:12, 24 December 2025 (UTC)

I cannot find this statement in the article. Double sharp (talk) 10:36, 25 December 2025 (UTC)

User:Johnjbarton had changed it. DMacks (talk) 12:59, 25 December 2025 (UTC)

Yes, sorry I forgot to reply after my change. I think the rest of the paragraph needs attention but I don't have access to the source given. Johnjbarton (talk) 23:02, 25 December 2025 (UTC)

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Hello, this is my first time commenting on a Wikipedia article so please excuse me if this is perhaps not the right place to post this.

The value of the specific heat in the property table shows a value of 428.999 J/(kg·K) (I2), which I'm pretty confident refers to atomic iodine I rather than to I2, contrary to what the brackets specify. In fact, 428.999 J/(kg·K) is obtained by converting the molar heat capacity, listed just above at 54.44 J/(mol·K), to J/(kg·K) by using the molar mass of atomic iodine, 126.09 g, whereas by using the molar mass of I2 we get ~214 J/(kg·K), half of that.

I also noticed some inconsistency when switching to other wiki languages of the same page (Spanish or Italian for instance), where the same quantity is listed as being equal to 145 J/(kg·K). In fact, while the English page is likely listing the specific heat of solid iodine, some other pages list instead the one of iodine gas, sourced both from this book, on page A.46, and from the NIST database. Annucc (talk) 15:04, 25 March 2026 (UTC)

The first take away from this analysis and a comparison to the sources is that what we list is completely unclear. I will open a topic on WT:Elements. Johnjbarton (talk) 16:46, 25 March 2026 (UTC)

 Not done. Page is not protected, so you can make any edits you want directly. it has pending changes configured, which means that if you're not autoconfirmed, someone will have to review and accept it, but it's a simpler process. –Deacon Vorbis (carbon • videos) 17:19, 25 March 2026 (UTC)

No edit on this page will fix the problem. Seems like more of a design flaw to me. Johnjbarton (talk) 17:51, 25 March 2026 (UTC)

I see that the page has been updated and specific heat and molar heat capacity have both been removed. While this is fine while we decide the best way to display this, it should be a temporary solution otherwise the iodine wiki page will simply have missing info compared to other elements of the periodic table.

Ideally, it would be optimal to homogenize the way the wiki presents things across all elements and perhaps across languages, but I imagine this to be a quite demanding task. A quick and painless solution would be to either change the numerical value to ~214 and keep the brackets as is, a solution which I prefer given how iodine exists as I2 at the solid state, or keep the 428.999 value and change the brackets from I2 to I. The discrepancy with the other wiki languages will remain, so we may need to specify that the value refers to the solid state iodine rather than to the gas.

In terms of reference, I would say that citing a reputable source here, as well as for all the other properties actually, is pretty important. As far as I know the NIST database is quite complete and readily available to consult, so perhaps that can work. Annucc (talk) 09:06, 26 March 2026 (UTC)

The value 54.44 J/(mol·K) for specific heat capacity of solid iodine is given at Heat capacities of the elements (data page) and referenced to Lange's handbook. I have thus restored it. (There is also another value given for gaseous iodine, not used in the infobox because that's not the standard state.)

If you look at the bottom of the infoboxes, you will find "references" which links you to these data pages; unfortunately, maybe because almost everything by now on WP uses the bracketed-number citations, this 2005 system of referencing seems to be confusing a lot of people these days. (It is mostly the way it is because no one has actually gone through all 118 element infoboxes to update the system. So the data is all referenced, it just doesn't look like it is because it uses a different system of referencing to everything else.) Double sharp (talk) 09:48, 26 March 2026 (UTC)

@Double sharp The problem was not the "Molar heat capacity" 54.44 J/(mol·K). The problem was the "Specific heat capacity" Johnjbarton (talk) 15:44, 26 March 2026 (UTC)