About the site





History

When I started out with this site way back in 2004, is was supposed to be a family site. You know, the kind that was all the rage back then. Presentation of the family members, pictures from vacations and celebrations. Stuff like that. Basically what we do on Facebook today, which is probably why this kind of sites is more or less gone today. Anyway, apparently I was the only one thinking this would be a great idea, so I had to find another use for the site... and most of my family isn't on Facebook either (or Linked In or any other social media for that matter), so the whole family site thing was just not happening.

After two years of doing nothing on the site, I decided to start a chemistry site. It was something I had planned on doing for a long time, and now I found the time. Pilgaard Solutions was born.

Writing chemistry in HTML is a royal pain, and until you get the codes for all the special effects in place, it takes an insane amount of time writing formulas and reactions. Eventually a site emerged. The design sucked, but I had to start somewhere and work my way towards a solution that worked. Eventually I also got a good design.

The site was fairly unfocused having some material science and some educational material about chemistry and HTML programming. The part about HTML programming was split off in 2013 and has been quite successful on its own. The rest of the site was also somewhat successful, after I found a good design, but also rather neglected and still unfocused.

By the summer of 2016 I decided to split the site into three sites. One about the table of elements, one about polymers and this old site would be educational material. Pilgaard Solutions was history. Having written some pages in Danish for my site WebKemi.dk, it made sense to convert the pages to English, and as new pages in Danish are written, I'll translate them for this site.


Why am I wasting my time doing this?

Because it matters!

Accessible knowledge matters!

The World is filled with all sorts of religious and political nuts spewing hate and lies, and lots of information is hidden behind paywalls making it inaccessible unless you have money. Keeping knowledge from the general public is a way of maintaining power, and it works. People will do insanely stupid things an kill others to maintain some belief or power structure, even if it keeps them poor and/or miserable, because all they are being fed is a slew of lies and hate. Making knowledge available is one way of enabling people to make informed decisions and help those who want to, to move forward. It is not the only solution, or a solution on its own. Most importantly, it is not a quick fix. It is only a part of the solution, but somebody's got to provide this part, and this is a part of my contribution.

Free education here in Denmark made it possible for me to get a good education, because I used the chance offered to me. Other countries don't have that kind of options. Here you have to be rich, connected or excel at sports to get an education. I would prefer if people got an education because they were willing to spend the time and effort getting it. Offering free knowledge and educational material is one way of helping out, and where I can make a difference, so that's what I do. On this site and all the other ones I've got.


Anyway

Thanks for visiting the site. Hope you found some useful information.


Michael Pilgaard
Frederikssund, Denmark, July 19, 2016