Talk:Colloidal gold

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Contents 1 Units 2 Re: Units 3 External links 4 "Health benefits" 5 Cancer Ward 6 Dubious

[edit] Units

There seems to be a mini edit-war breaking out over the use of micron versus micrometre and M versus mol. Am I right in thinking that the latter in each case is technically more correct that the former? Specifically, micron is an old and deprecated (although common) alternative for micrometre, and M actually refers to the molarity of a solution rather than one mole. -- ALoan (Talk) 11:09, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Re: Units

M vs. mol - good point, my bad. I'm a physicist, not chemist, so sometimes make stupid mistakes like that.

micron vs. micrometer - technically, the latter is correct, but the former is easier to write and means exactly the same thing: μm = 1/1 000 000 of a meter.

Well, I am an astronomer - fortnuately, someone who knowns some chemistry wrote articles about moles and molarity.

OK - so mol is right, yes? I can't get excited about the difference between micron and micrometre, but we don't need a host of reverts - what is the consensus?

And I think you'll find it is µm (µm) not μm (μm) :) -- ALoan (Talk) 15:15, 12 Aug 2004 (UTC)

The Wikipedia article for mole provides useful input for this debate. As does the official SI definition and symbol for mole.

The SI website also says that the term micron was officially dropped in 1968. Current use might be characterised as 'colloquial' as with the officially obsolete term Centigrade. The term 'micron' is typically seen in particular domains and regions, but is not universal in either. The SI format [prefix]+[unit name] indicates the size and the measure as in microgram, microvolt, microwatt, microfarad. The format also applies in symbols. The constant repetition of this consistent format is useful for transfer of knowledge when encountering terms that may be unfamiliar such as femtometre, kilocoulomb or GJ.

The micron does not fit into this format. It requires unique knowledge of size and what it is measuring. Many online references to micron often provide a definition in the text because of this problem. The US NIST and the IAU say micron is non-preferred.

I know that a lot of people still use it, just as a lot of people still use Centigrade. So we can't stop such terms cropping up in original material or in quotes. Wikipedia links to micron simply redirect to the micrometre article. At the very least, such redirect should be avoided. I made the original correction but had forgotten about it. I merely happened to come across the term on that page again. The history of edit summaries indicated something other than reversion, so I assumed it had appeared in added text. I did not check the details of each edit until you guys started discussing it. It is a small surprise to learn that it was a reversion rather than new text but it isn't a big deal.

I hope that is useful context

Bobblewik 19:42, 12 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for your clarification - I had assumed it was reversion as the terms swapped back and forth a couple of times, but I'm glad we have (I think; I hope) resolved the issue. -- ALoan (Talk) 19:51, 12 Aug 2004 (UTC)

[edit] External links

I removed the entire section of external links (two of them) here [1] - they don't seem to fit into the theme of the artice content as it exists at the moment. Thoughts? What would be really nice would be an external link to polymerization reactions conducted on colloidal gold particles. I'll see if I can find something like that. --HappyCamper 17:47, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "Health benefits"

Removed section again as it is not sourced to a reliable peer reviewed source, rather to A Meridian Institute website. Wiki is not for the promotion of quackery. --Vsmith 12:50, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

I would like to see some content on the page about the purported health benefits and any studies regarding those claims, one way or the other. While I believe that it may well be "quackery," it is certainly a phenomenon that is worth discussing as products meant for ingestion are being marketed heavily in the health product industry. Herbanreleaf 01:20, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

• I think lack of such studies is part of the problem. "Nutritional supplements" don't require that they be studied before they are marketed. eaolson 01:23, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

If there are no studies then the claims should be part of the article as well as the fact that they are unproven. Herbanreleaf 19:37, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

I would have to agree that there should be some discussion of claimed health benefits in this article, whether they're true or not. The phenomenon is so large, at least in the United States, that their absence from this article is very conspicuous and smells of censure, so I'm going ahead and adding some mention of it. Yosemite1967 19:20, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

Followup: I've gone ahead and added a section for this and contributed quite a few government and medical-journal sources for all of the information that I added. No quackery here (as if the government never participates in such--LOL). Yosemite1967 23:10, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Cancer Ward

I remember that in the novel Cancer Ward by Solzhenitsyn, one of the patients needs colloidal gold for some test or treatment. What could it be? Sergivs-en 08:25, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Dubious

We need a reference that nanoparticle gold is the same as colloidal gold, preferrably in the reference itself, or it might be WP:SYN. As it stands, there's clearly (although this is WP:OR on my part) a difference between chelated gold (sometimes also called colloidal gold, although there's only one gold atom per structure) and structures containg a few to a few hundred gold atoms coated with some sort of ionic substance. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 19:21, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

• There's a link to colloid in the lead graf. Isn't that enough? I've never heard chelated gold referred to as colloidal. They're very definitely distinct things. Also, any coating on the surface of a particle is optional for a colloid. Some have one, and it makes it more stable and functionalizable, but it's not a defining characteristic. eaolson 23:22, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

Valid question but the nanoparticle article is clear about it: a nanoparticle is any particle with diameter less than 100 nm and the particles found in colloidal gold are gold nanoparticles. I do not see an immediate need for two separate articles on nanogold and colloidal gold V8rik 21:11, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

OK, withdrawing. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 21:13, 24 September 2007 (UTC)