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The FREE online science and technology book

Want to know why giant ships can float, how your earbuds make music, what graphene is, or how windows can clean themselves? You've come to the right place! Here you'll find simple explanations you can really understand—hurrah!

Hard stuff... made simple!

Explain that Stuff is an online book written by science writer Chris Woodford (author of many popular science books for adults and children, including Atoms Under the Floorboards: The Surprising Science Hidden in Your Home). It includes over 400 easy-to-understand articles, richly illustrated with clear artworks and animations, covering how things work, cutting-edge science, cool gadgets, and computers. We take the "pain" from explain and the "tough" out of stuff! There's more information on this website than in your average expensive science book, it's continually updated, and it's completely free to use! Explain that Stuff also helps to support curriculum learning (conventional STEM education and home-schooling).

What's hot in September 2020?

In the news now...

Plans to launch the world's first "exascale" supercomputer in the USA in 2021 have suffered a major setback. Meanwhile, Fugaku, at RIKEN Center for Computational Science (R-CCS) in Japan remains the fastest machine on Earth.

Construction has started on ITER, an experimental nuclear fusion plant in France. Will this ingenious atomic machine help us solve the world's energy problems?

Washing hands thoroughly with soap and water is a great thing to be doing right now. But why, exactly, is soap better than water alone?

From Delhi to Paris and London to New York, air pollution has fallen in the last few months. But why, indoors and out, does it still kill an estimated 7–10 million people a year?

A new study suggests spreading rock dust on fields to "suck" carbon dioxide out of the air. How realistic is "geoengineering" and can it really tackle the climate change emergency?

Most popular

These are some more of our classic, ever-popular articles:

What else is on our site?

The articles on our site are divided up into broad topical areas, listed below. We've also given you a rough idea of the kind of questions you're going to find answers to in each section:

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