Support This Site

Reference sites tend to get worse over time, and the reason is almost always the same. Traffic arrives, the traffic gets monetised, the monetisation needs more traffic, and eventually the thing that made the site worth visiting is competing for space with the thing that pays for it. This site is trying not to go that way, which requires being straightforward about what it costs.

The expensive part is not the servers

Serving pre-built pages to a lot of people is close to free. The recurring cost of a dated reference is the checking.

IUPAC revises at least one standard atomic weight in most years. When that happens, the source snapshot has to be re-captured, the whole dataset re-derived from it, the differences examined one by one, and any page whose prose discusses a changed value re-read. The same applies when a property compilation issues a new edition, or when a superheavy element's claimed properties move from predicted to measured. None of that is automatable in the way it looks like it should be, because the interesting cases are exactly the ones where two references now disagree and somebody has to decide which one this site follows and write down why.

Add to that the ordinary work: writing element pages that say something specific rather than something generic, checking a discovery credit against two accounts that name different people, and rebuilding the printable pack whenever the data underneath it moves.

Two ways to fund it

Buy the printable study pack. This is the main one, and it is the only transaction on the site. You get the element data typeset for paper and for a wall; the site gets funded by someone who received something in exchange.

Contribute directly. If the pack is not useful to you but the site has been, a one-off contribution does the same job with less paperwork. There is no recurring plan, no membership, no supporter badge and nothing gated behind it — every page stays exactly as available to a reader who gives nothing as to one who gives.

Three ways that cost nothing

• Send a correction. A wrong number found and fixed is worth more to this site than most donations, and finding them is the part one person cannot do alone. The contact page covers what makes one quick to act on.
• Link a page. Not for the search engine so much as for the reader: a link in a lesson plan, a study guide, a forum answer or a set of course notes reaches exactly the person the page was written for.
• Tell a teacher. The single most useful referral this site gets is a chemistry teacher who puts a link in front of thirty students who are all stuck on the mole at the same time.

What the money will never buy

No advertising will be sold here, no post will be sponsored, no affiliate link will be planted in an element page, and the mailing list will not be rented to anyone. If a section of this site ever starts recommending products, it will be because a product genuinely belongs in it and the page will say plainly who paid for what.

The reference stays free. That is the entire point of funding it this way.