About us/FAQ
Last updated: 29 August, 2010.
- About this site
- Legal notices (copyright, privacy, photos, etc)
- Advertising on this website
- Link policy
- Found a mistake? Want to suggest an improvement?
About this site
Who writes this stuff?
Hello! I'm Chris Woodford, a British science writer who's published lots of books on science and technology, including the best-selling how-it-works titles Cool Stuff and How it Works, Cool Stuff 2.0 (The Gadget Book), and Cool Stuff Exploded.
In case you're interested, I have an MA in Natural Sciences from Cambridge University and I had my first magazine article published back in 1980. I've been writing about science and technology pretty much ever since.
Is this site safe for children?
This is an educational website designed to be safe and suitable for all family users. I take my responsibility to young people very seriously. All the pages on this site are labelled using the standard Internet Content Rating Association (ICRA) system. The Google-powered search boxes have "safe search" enabled by default. If you discover anything that you think may be inappropriate for young readers, please alert me straight away using the email address at the bottom of this page and I will put it right immediately.
Why explain stuff that way?
Science and technology is fascinating, fun, and incredibly important, but most people don't really understand it, even when they've studied it for years in school. Whose fault is that? I'm not sure—but my mission is to help put things right!
Explainthatstuff.com is a completely free guide to the science and technology that surrounds us, designed for a broad, family audience. You'll find my articles are a bit different from the ones you get on other websites or in science books: I try to give you a good, clear, simple understanding of a subject rather than drown you in facts and details before you're ready for them. If you grasp the basic idea behind something, you'll have really solid foundations on which to build your understanding when you're ready to do so; but no amount of facts will help you if you lack the basic grounding to start with. Apart from explaining how things work, I try to teach the broad scientific principles behind things so you can make connections, see patterns, and figure new things out for yourself. Generally, my approach is to talk you gently around a subject, building on stuff you're likely to know already, a bit like a decent teacher would do.
This site is dedicated to helping you learn useful and interesting things. I've spent four years (so far!) putting it together and I really do hope you enjoy it. If not, do please write and tell me. Your feedback is very welcome!
Legal notices
© Copyright
Please note that different rights apply to the words and the pictures on this website.
Using my words
Can you copy and use articles from this website onto your own website? Sorry, but no.
All the text on Explain that Stuff is protected by international copyright laws and all rights are reserved. Please also note that the text from this website is registered at the US Copyright Office, so willful copyright infringement could make you liable to statutory damages of up to $150,000 per work infringed. With the exception of fair use, you are not permitted to copy, broadcast, download, store (in any medium), transmit, show or play in public, adapt or change in any way the text of Explainthatstuff.com web pages for any other purpose whatsoever without the prior written permission of the copyright owner.
Since this website is all about promoting science education, I'm generally happy to grant permission for limited reuse of material offline (not on other websites) for noncommercial, educational purposes (by teachers for class handouts, students in school coursework, nonprofits and charities in printed literature, and so on), providing the source is acknowledged. I'm very sorry, but I do not permit reuse of my articles in their entirety on other websites for any reason. Fair use, such as briefly quoting from my articles in blogs and so on, is of course absolutely fine. Please do feel free to contact me if you have any queries about any of this, you'd like to discuss reprinting or reusing my articles, or you'd like me to confirm whether some use you have in mind is acceptable.
Using my pictures
Can you copy and use my pictures? Broadly speaking, if you're not using them to make money, yes, with pleasure! But do read on.
The photos and artworks on this site fall into three different groups:
- Any images and photos I've used are believed, in good faith, to be in the public domain if they come from sources such as NASA, the US Department of Energy, or the US Military. I have taken reasonable steps to check each image, but I cannot and do not guarantee its copyright status. If you want to reuse one of these photos, it's your responsibility to confirm the copyright status for yourself. In case you're wondering, I have sometimes "cropped," blurred, scrambled, or otherwise disguised people's faces in public domain photos to protect their right to privacy. It is my policy to give individual photographers full credit for their work whenever I possibly can and I would suggest you do the same.
- I also use a few photos from Flickr that are published under various Creative Commons licenses. Please note that these photos are still protected by copyright and their owners grant us permission to use them only if we follow their conditions (the licence, in other words). If you wish to reuse these photos on your own website, please be sure to follow the licence exactly. Usually that means you have to credit the original photographer (which is only fair) and repeat the licence. If you're not sure, copy the exact words I've used to credit the photographer and the link to the Flickr and Creative Commons websites and you should be OK. (I hasten to add that I return the favor by offering my own photos for reuse on my Flickr page.)
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Any other photos or artworks that are not attributed are ones I have created and
you're welcome to use and reuse them for noncommercial purposes only under the terms of this
Creative Commons License.
Hi-res versions of a few of my photos are available for commercial use, under license, on my
Flickr page.
Please would you kindly attribute any images I've created by crediting explainthatstuff.com and making a link to the page on our website where the original image appears. Some HTML along these lines would be just great, thanks:
Hotlinking to my pictures from your pages
If you would like to use images from this site, you'll need to copy and upload them to your own server rather than linking directly to them ("hotlinking"). Please note that image hotlinks to explainthatstuff.com are automatically blocked because it costs me a huge amount of money to serve images up on other people's websites If you link to my images directly from your own pages, you'll find a dummy placeholder image (right) appearing instead of the picture you actually want. Worry not. To get the correct image, all you need to do is copy it to your own webspace: right click on the image you want, save it to your hard disk, and then upload it to your own web server as though it were a file you created yourself. If you have problems, send me an email and I'll try to help.
Privacy policy
Please see the privacy policy page.
Product photographs
This website contains photographs of real-world products purely for illustrative purposes. The inclusion of a photograph in an article does not represent any endorsement by us of the product shown or any endorsement by the product manufacturer of this website or anything we may say in the text.
Advertising on this website
I'm delighted when advertisers enjoy a business boost by advertising on this site. I have chosen the reliable and very effective Google Adwords program to manage our carefully targeted advertisements. If you'd like to advertise on this site, please would you kindly do so through Adwords. I think you'll find it's a highly cost-effective way to boost traffic to your site and promote your business. Find out more about Google's advertising programs.
Please note that explainthatstuff.com does not sell any advertising space or advertising links directly. I am very sorry, but I am unable to reply to the many emails I receive proposing advertising links to commercial sites.
Link policy
- This is an educational and informative website, so I'm delighted to make links to other high-quality, high-content pages likely to be of genuine educational value to readers of a particular page or article.
- On the main site (www.explainthatstuff.com), I do not generally make links to commercial sites or pages that are purely selling products or services. Our "complete guide" sub-sites (for example, www.explainthatstuff.com/photography) do make commercial links providing they are actually recommending useful and relevant products, so you're welcome to suggest sites for inclusion there. However, I do not guarantee I will include your site. I'm very sorry, but I'm unable to reply to the many emails I receive proposing links to commercial sites. If you're one of those people who likes to send multiple follow-up emails to find out why your link hasn't been added yet, here's a word of advice: don't.
- Thanks for your interest, but this website does not take part in link exchanges ("please link to us and we'll link back"). They are now positively frowned up by search engines, and rightly so.
- You don't need to ask permission to link to pages on this website. If you have a corporate policy that requires you to seek our permission before making such a link, please cite this web page as your permission.
- I never sell links to or buy links from other sites.
Contacting us
I'm very sorry, but I cannot provide extra information about any of the articles on this website or help students with projects, essays, or schoolwork. I'm really sorry about that, but there just aren't enough hours in the day and school assignments are meant to test your abilities, not mine! Why not try a Google search in the box below? Just think of five or ten words that sum up the information you're looking for, type them in the box, and click search.
