Wikijunior:How Things Work/Contributing

Why contribute?
When working on this project, remember that it's aimed at children. It's more important to be understood than to be precisely accurate on every detail. Use technical vocabulary when you need to, but don't use big words where simpler language would work. Whenever you have to use a word, list it in the glossary of basic terms, and define it. Either that, or note it needs to be defined in the glossary page. Giving definitions when such words are used is generally a good idea as well.

This project is about how different kinds of machines work. Emphasis will be given to those kinds of machines that a child would encounter in ordinary everyday life, but other kinds of machines could also be included. Because the number of different machines that can be suggested is very large, please try to help clean up and work on existing articles as much as possible, and only start a new article if you are planning on making substantial contributions to that topic.

Please, if you can contribute to this book, do so. Many sections are in need of cleanup and complete rewrites. You can work on almost anything including this page, but if you want to make some significant changes please bring them up on the discussion page.

Beginning your article
Copy the following text to a page entitled "Wikijunior How Things Work/Technology name" to begin your article.

Major questions
The questions that will appear in every article are:


 * Who invented it?
 * How does it get power? (What makes it run?)
 * How does it work?
 * How dangerous is it?
 * What does it do?
 * How does it vary? (e.g., range of sizes, running parameters, variants like gas/diesel...)
 * How has it changed the world?
 * What idea(s) and/or inventions had to be developed before it could be created?