Talk:Halite

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 11 January 2019 and 17 April 2019. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Paulkong.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 23:00, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

Infobox stats

Can someone fix the information in the infobox? The density and Melting point entries are currently useless:

   Density			very tough
   Melting point	over 20 degrees

—Preceding unsigned comment added by AmRadioHed (talk • contribs) 23:27, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

no help

this didnt help me at all but i have not had any problems b4 this —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mrs.nicholas jerry jonas (talk • contribs) 21:50, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

rocksalt

what states is rocksalt found in —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.235.41.213 (talk) 20:08, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

Ammo

I was looking for how rock salt is used in shotgun, but the article doesn't mention it.--24.255.171.220 (talk) 17:31, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Bilma salt is evaporated, not mined

Those are evaporation ponds. See Paul E. Lovejoy, Salt of the Desert Sun (1986). I'm going to go ahead and remove that image as that is a Natron pit. T L Miles (talk) 05:00, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

Rock Salt : Halite

The article is very useful in the sense of its occurrence, and some how its uses. However, the rock salt is usually used in medicines also in India and some parts of South Asia. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 117.242.13.218 (talk) 10:19, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

Uses

There is a section about uses of rock salt, but it only talks about its freezing/defreezing uses, but it doesn't mention its cooking uses. I don't know about the American cuisine, but rock salt is very popular in Brazil, specially for seasoning barbecue, and I really think it should be mentioned in the article. What do you guys think? Cpt Vidal (talk) 01:35, 27 February 2011 (UTC)

Requested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: No move. Cúchullain ^t/c 19:38, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

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Halite → Rock salt – What the hell is Halite? Oh everyone calls it Rock salt. Obvious common name outside of the scientific community I mean. I've never heard it called Halite and it's more commonly known as Rock salt. JOJ ^Hutton 01:22, 27 April 2014 (UTC)

• Easy support Red Slash 05:21, 27 April 2014 (UTC) - edit: or split into two articles Red Slash 00:21, 30 April 2014 (UTC)
• Support. WP:COMMONNAME. --B2C 03:27, 28 April 2014 (UTC)
• Support per WP:COMMONNAME. bd2412 T 13:18, 28 April 2014 (UTC)
• Oppose. I think the current redirect from Rock salt to this article is sufficient for anyone searching for that term to get where they want to go. It may be known as rock salt in some commercial and mining contexts; but halite is the name of the stuff qua mineral, and that's why Britannica, for instance, uses it as the name of their article. A similar case would be pitchblende, which although a common name redirects to uraninite. Deor (talk) 14:02, 28 April 2014 (UTC)
• Oppose per Deor's reasoning. Halite is the mineral name. Vsmith (talk) 14:33, 28 April 2014 (UTC)
  • Wikipedia uses Common Names, not the technical name. Seriously?--JOJ ^Hutton 20:58, 28 April 2014 (UTC)

If "Wikipedia uses Common Names, not the technical name", why does horse chestnut redirect to Aesculus hippocastanum, among many other examples that could be cited? One of the sentences at WP:COMMONNAME is "Other encyclopedias are among the sources that may be helpful in deciding what titles are in an encyclopedic register, as well as what names are most frequently used." I suggest that you take a look at other encyclopedias to see how many title their entries "Halite" and how many use "Rock salt". Deor (talk) 08:25, 29 April 2014 (UTC)

So since article "A" does it, so must article "B"? Thats hardly a strong appeal for keeping the title as it is. Also if the article that you linked is not currently using its common name as the article title, its a sure bet that it too should be moved to its common name. There are quite a few articles on Wikipedia that need to be moved because they are not using the most common name. Eventually someone will nominate them, eventually. Just as I did here.--JOJ ^Hutton 17:45, 29 April 2014 (UTC)

You might try looking at this section of the botanical naming guidelines, which explains why the article is at Aesculus hippocastanum rather than Horse chestnut. In the case under discussion here, "halite" is the WP:COMMONNAME of the mineral, even though it may not be the answer to "What name do common folk use?" It's the name most commonly used by sources discussing minerals. Deor (talk) 22:17, 29 April 2014 (UTC)

The article is about the mineral halite; it is not about rock salt. A mineralogical article discusses the mineralogy and geology of the mineral. The Uses section discusses the applications as road salt and food salt ... neither strictly about halite the mineral - rather about the uses of salt (sodium chloride) +/- other chemicals used for de-icing. Rock salt would better be about the evaporite salt rock formations from which rock salt is mined. So, although technically most rock salt is the mineral halite, the rock salt redirect should go to an article about these evaporite deposits or perhaps to salt mine with appropriate linking from the halite article to the rock salt deposit/mining article. The article about the mineral should retain the mineral name and focus on the mineralogy. Another option would be to create an article about rock salt which focuses on the mining, occurrence and uses -- although seems that's already covered at salt. Soo change the redirect of rock salt to salt and be done with it. Vsmith (talk) 18:39, 29 April 2014 (UTC)

Re: the What the hell is Halite? comment above; did you learn anything? :) Vsmith (talk) 19:03, 29 April 2014 (UTC)

So what if it's a mineral? The article still isn't using the most common name used in reliable English language sources. That's it. That's all that matters concerning the title. The MOST common name.JOJ ^Hutton 21:38, 29 April 2014 (UTC)

Proof that Halite is Rock Salt and not a different substance The sources in the article call Halite Rock Salt This source says that Rock Salt is a synonym of Halite. It also says gives the structure of Halite and says Rock Salt structure. This source also call Rock Salt a synonym of Halite. This source says, Halite , better known as rock salt.... These are the sources used in the article so they are reliable. Halite the common name of Rock Salt. They are not different and are not separate topics as some have claimed, so there is no reason to have two articles as some have suggested..--JOJ ^Hutton 02:06, 1 May 2014 (UTC)

• Support – using the common name supports title recognizability. Dicklyon (talk) 04:15, 2 May 2014 (UTC)
• Oppose Wikipedia chemistry and Wikipedia geology projects have many (hundreds?) of separate, parallel articles on mineral and the related chemicals. Are editors here recommending that every mineral article be merged with every chemical? The handing and uses of minerals is often very different than the purified chemical. The merge proposal could get very large and diminish the scope of Wikipedia in technical areas where others could make comments like "What the hell is Halite?". Is cotton going to be merged with cellulose? Etc. The world is a complicated place.--Smokefoot (talk) 15:40, 4 May 2014 (UTC)
• Oppose per Vsmith. The main topic of the article is about the mineral, so the title should be the commonname in that domain even if some discussed application of the mineral uses a synonym more commonly. If we had an separate article about that sub-topic/application, its commonname in that domain would be reasonable for that article. DMacks (talk) 16:27, 4 May 2014 (UTC)
  • You do realize that Halite and Rock Salt are the same exact thing. One is not just a part if the other. That's what the sources say. And we go by the sources not by someone's opinion. JOJ ^Hutton 16:56, 4 May 2014 (UTC)

Isn't that why I described one as "a synonym" of the other? My point is that in different contexts, the same thing is apparently called by different names. If the article were to be about one context, we'd use that one's terminology. If it were a highly unified article mixing multiple contexts, we'd have no consensus about which one "wins", so we retain existing per policy. If it were primarily about one context with a part about the other, we'd use the terminology for the main context. It appears the article falls into the third type. DMacks (talk) 17:56, 4 May 2014 (UTC)

• • Rock salt is a synonym for halite, according to my sources. Formally speaking, the redirect from "rock salt" should be to "halite," not to "NaCl." But I think that the rigorous definition is slipping. Most people, especially those without technical backgrounds, think that rock salt is synonymous with NaCl, but it is a kind of NaCl derived from the mineral. Differences between halite and NaCl exist in terms of occurrence, polymorphism (NaCl can be hexagonal but halite is always cubic I think), history, uses. Molybdenite and molybdenum disulfide are basically the same compositions as are fluorite and calcium difluoride, rutile and titanium dioxide. The list is long. We dont want to dumb down Wikipedia for the sake of easy reading. And beyond minerals, Cotton is basically cellulose. Fresh water is H2O. I can see why you might want to merge these things, but to technical people, the context and many important details are quite different. --Smokefoot (talk) 17:26, 4 May 2014 (UTC)
• Oppose Rock salt is what gets mined and typically has impurities such as the minerals gypsum and sylvite and clay and silt particles. There is a clear distinction to be made between rock salt and the mineral halite in my view. Mikenorton (talk) 18:41, 4 May 2014 (UTC)
• Oppose Here we are talking about the pure mineral. Rocksalt is really the bulk material, which is more of a rock, and may include other minerals. Somewhat like the difference between quartz and quartzite. Rocksalt could have its own article rather than being a redirect. In Wikipedia we need to make clear distinctions and have more article with more detail, rather than less with less detail. That is how it gets bigger. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 20:53, 4 May 2014 (UTC)
• Oppose It's the difference between a rock and a mineral. Minerals are pure substances with a single chemical composition, typical crystal expression, etc. A rock is made up of minerals. Rock salt is a rock made of the mineral halite. It's no less a rock because only one mineral is present. - Gorthian (talk) 02:44, 5 May 2014 (UTC)
• Oppose The differences between a rock and a mineral are well stated above. Wilson44691 (talk) 11:31, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

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The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.