Translation talk:On a Heuristic Point of View about the Creation and Conversion of Light

Information about this edition
Edition:	The original title is Über einen die Erzeugung und Verwandlung des Lichtes betreffenden heuristischen Gesichtspunkt.
Source:	Annalen der Physik, 17, 132-148 (1905).
Contributor(s):	WillowW, Cleonis
Level of progress:	Completed
Notes:	Not checked
Proofreaders:

Title

I just wanted to point out that many translations use the following title

On a Heuristic Point of View about the Creation and Conversion of Light

The above article is free and might be useful for the translation... --MPerrin 132.204.68.119 21:29, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

More literal translation

I agree about the title - point of view rather than model.

I do appreciate the effort by WillowW and think it would be good to continue this translation project, and make comments, if necessary.

However, I think it is important to translate more literally. Translator's comments should be made in such a way that it is clear where a comment is being made.

I found some differences in the meaning that could be misleading and tried to correct some of them:

a) Energy quanta were spatially localized at points of space, not just localized. It is important because these points were moving and colliding as gas molecules. Otherwise the use of gas equations would be difficult to explain.

b) Names like ultraviolet catstrophy and Hooke's law were not used in the original text in Section 1. They are useful as translator's comments rather than as the translated text.

c) Footnote 1 is missing.

Why did the translation stop? Is it really not possible to write anything better than the old translations? Some interesting points could still be discovered!--C. Trifle (talk) 13:55, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

Translation completed

As source material for the translation I used the PDF-file that is currently available at the following location: http://www.zbp.univie.ac.at/dokumente/einstein1.pdf

Following the guideline of the Wikipedia Manual of Style for Mathematical articles I have used html for inline symbols and expressions, so that inline symbols are not inserted in the form of png images.

Still, the drawbacks are quite bad.

Greek letters: In LaTeX text the undercase phi is the same shape as the uppercase Phi, only different in size. With HTML entities, by the looks of it the undercase phi: φ and the uppercase Phi: Φ are really distinct. That is, LaTeX and HTML entities disagree about the shape of the undercase phi.

Einstein used the greek letter 'nu' as symbol for the frequency of the radiation. The HTML entity ν is in the font I use not distinguishable from the letter 'v' from the standard alfabet. That's a problem, because Einstein used the letter 'v' to represent Volume.

Cleonis | Talk 21:59, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

Translation of second note on page 148

In the original, on page 148, the following sentence leads up to a note:

Eine obere Grenze für die Ionisierungsarbeit gewinnt man auch aus den Ionisierungsspannungen in verdünnten Gasen. Nach Stark is die kleinste gemessene Ionisierungsspannung (an Platinanoden) für Luft ca. 10 Volt.

And the subsequent note is:

Im Gasinnern is die Ionisierungsspannung für negative Ionen allerdings fünfmal größer.

I don't know what 'Gasinnern' refers to. The 'inside of the gas' as opposed to what?
'Ionisierungsspannung für negative Ionen'[...] I don't know what ions Einstein is referring to there. Molecular Nitrogen? I don't know.
In the translation I used the word 'nonetheless' for 'allerdings', but probably that's wrong.

Hypothesis:
Einstein intended to signal/emphasize that the value found by Stark is pure and uncontaminated with some other ionisation effect, specifically ionisation of some already ionized molecule, as that ionisation energy is 5 times higher.
The intended message then is: we don't need to consider another ionisation effet, given that it requires 5 times more energy anyway.

Any thoughts?
Cleonis | Talk 14:44, 13 August 2011 (UTC)