How Products Are Made - website

From the website's home page

This website has a lot of material for both teachers (classroom material, background, etc.) and students (research, reading, personal interests, etc.). The website's description is:

"How Products Are Made explains and details the manufacturing process of a wide variety of products, from daily household items to complicated electronic equipment and heavy machinery. The site provides step-by-step descriptions of the assembly and the manufacturing process (complemented with illustrations and diagrams). Each product also has related information such as the background, how the item works, who invented the product, raw materials that were used, product applications, by-products that are generated, possible future developments, quality control procedures, etc."

Link to the website: http://www.madehow.com/

I chose Compact Disc as an example of a description of how something is made:

"Making a compact disc involves first preparing a glass "disc master." This master is then encoded with the desired information and put through a series of electroforming steps. In electroforming, metal layers are deposited on the glass master using electric currents. When the final master version is ready, its information is transfered onto a plastic disc. A reflective aluminum layer is applied, followed by a clear acrylic protective layer, and finally the label."

Read more: http://www.madehow.com/Volume-1/Compact-Disc.html#ixzz36NjGBief

The explanation is clear, and provides a good model for students' own process descriptions. The diagrams are particularly useful both for students to understand and as models for them to emulate.

There are many "non-technical" products described as well, such as chocolate and chewing gum. Students will certainly find products that interest them and learn something new. Background information and history are given, then a description of the product, and finally a process description of how it is made - including visuals.

This is very useful for all types of descriptions, presentations, as well as basic information about products.

An extra section is inventor biographies - interesting for students to find out who developed these products, and how it was done.