Talk:Aerosol

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We should rewrite this with a general definition first.

When people light them to make "flamethrowers", they can explode, correct? I know people who have tried it, no explosion, so they think that the "flame can't go up inside". But now I have heard that this is definitely not true... - Omegatron 01:28, Nov 24, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Aerosol Sprays

The article mentions that aerosol sprays are liquids held under pressure with a compressed gas. Is there a certain type of gas usually used in these sprays which contributes to climate change?

See Propellant#Aerosol sprays -- Securiger 09:14, 8 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Move

At the moment, there are two paragraphs of information on aerosol sprays at each of Aerosol#Aerosol spray and at Propellant#Aerosol sprays. I propose to create an article at Aerosol spray (currently a redirect back here, which is mainly about atmospheric particulates) and merge those four paragraphs to it, with appropriate links from Propellant, Aerosol and elsewhere. Any objections? -- Securiger 09:14, 8 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Redundant article with particulates

This article is redundant with the one on particulates ("aerosols" and "particulates" are synonyms). The articles discuss different aspects of particulates, this one focusing on climate change, and the other on sources and health effects. They should be combined with a redirect and appropriate subsections.

"particulates" to me means things-with-particles. Particulates are aerosols; calling sulphate aerosol particulates sounds odd. William M. Connolley 20:18, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC).

Hmm, reading the intro to this article, or indeed the ipcc defn of aerosol [1], my comment above doesn't seem too sensible :-(

It makes sense that the two articles would approach their respective subjects with different terminolgy; "Particulate Matter" is the standard term to environmental engineers and epidemiologists who study the health effects, but "aerosol" is definitely the standard term to geophysisists and climate scientists. They're really talking about the same thing though, and we should make that clear by merging and linking. I'm not so sure what the more standard or more general term is, though. I could argue that climate change has a large general public interest, but the same could be said for PM and its health effects. 7infinity 03:49, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

I am an aerosol/particulate scientist (see my web page at http://www.ce.cmu.edu/~adams/) new to Wikipedia so I wanted to check out my favorite topic. Particulates and aerosols are indeed synonymous so the articles are redundant. 7infinity's previous comment is right on the mark: the two communities tend to prefer one word over the other but not in an absolute sense. Everyone on either side (environmental engineers and climate scientists) knows both terms and uses both to some extent. Indeed, many people work on both sides of the issue. Maybe I will try to merge the articles if I learn enough about the Wikipedia system to do this.

I agree that there is a large overlap. I think that Aerosol would be best as a disambiguation page, with the content from this page merged to Particulate. Most people doing a search on aerosol would probably expect to go to spray cans. If people are happy with this I'll what I can do.--NHSavage 21:52, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

If people want to see what I'm planning for the merged page see User:NHSavage/sandbox after the AUT stuff. All I've done so far is copy and paste from the 2 articles, it needs some work.--NHSavage 23:12, 5 December 2005 (UTC)