How to - Definition and Overview

A how-to is an informal, often short, description of how to accomplish some specific task. They are generally meant to help non-experts, and may leave out details that are only important to experts, and may be greatly simplified from an overall discussion of the topic. See procedural knowledge for a discussion of what sort of knowledge is imparted, and how far it can be imparted, in how-tos.

Other types of instructional documentation include FAQs, manuals and guides. Wikipedia contains some procedural knowledge, partially listed below. For a list of how-tos related to Wikipedia itself, see Wikipedia:Help. Many additional how-tos can be found at Wikibooks:Main_Page.

An alphabetical listing of How-tos.

Science and teaching

• Constructing school science lab equipment
• Making up solutions
• Care of living organisms in a school

Biology

• Apparatus for demonstrating osmosis using Visking tubing
• Bell jar model lungs
• How to distinguish a monocot from a dicot
• Nail varnish impressions of stomata
• Paper chromatography of amino acids
• Prepare an onion tissue slide
• Prepare a wet mount (microscopy)
• Testing leaves for starch
• Using water snails and pond weed to investigate the carbon cycle
• Winkler test for dissolved oxygen
• How to demonstrate osmosis
• Showing CO₂ is produced by respiration using huff n puff apparatus
• Measuring transpiration with a potometer

Microbiology

• How to prepare and use agar plates
• Gram staining

Chemistry

• Flour bomb demonstration
• Flour fire ball
• Screaming jelly babies
• Cannon fire

Physics

• How to make a transformer
• Westminster motor kits
• Atmospheric pressure demonstrations
• Hydraulics demonstration
• The Indian rope trick (magnetism)
• Demonstrating properties of waves with a ripple tank
• Demonstrating sound waves on an oscilloscope
• Water rockets: Demonstrating Newton's Third Law, gas laws and rocketry in general.

Computer science

• How to program in object-oriented languages

Life sciences (including food production)

• How to choose your pet and take care of it
• How to tell bees from wasps
• How to breed Siamese Fighting Fish

First Aid

• How to perform CPR
• How to aid someone who's choking (Performing the Heimlich maneuver)

See also: Wikibooks: First Aid (http://textbook.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Aid) for a textbook

Gardening/agriculture

• How to clear fields from weeds
• How to make compost
• How to use moss as manure
• Harrowing How-To
• Banishing crows from a field
• Seaweed farming how-to
• How to cultivate barley
• How to cultivate beans
• How to cultivate vetch (a. k. a. tare)
• How to cultivate potatoes
• How to cultivate turnips

Cooking/food preparation

• The Wikipedia Cookbook
• The Wikipedia Cocktail Guide
• How to cook pasta
• How to make bread
• How to make butter
• How to make cider
• How to make mead
• How to make wine

Language (and geography/culture?)

• How to tell the origin of an accent in English
• How to send a message to future human beings
• How to learn a language
• How to name numbers in English

Literature (including reference)

• How to read a poem
• How to find a book (http://wikibooks.org/wiki/Transwiki:How_to_find_a_book)
• How to write a DBQ

Extra-curricular activities

Outdoor activities

• Hiking (see the section titled How to hike)
• How to light a fire
• How to obtain water in the wilderness
• Canoeing
• Cooking on a campfire
• How to catch a Pickerel

Arts and crafts

• How to make egg tempera paint
• How to make marbled paper
• How to paint walls to look like marble
• How to upholster

Performing arts and music

• How to learn lines
• How to sing a capella

Sports, games, and exercise

• How to solve the knight's tour
• How to solve the Rubik's Cube

Miscellaneous

• Calculating the day of the week
• How to care for a pet cockatoo
• how to do urdhwa reta kriya

External links

• http://www.eHow.com has a wide variety of how-to information. You can learn everything from how to throw a curveballto (http://www.ehow.com/how_1831_throw-curveball.html) how to tie a tie (http://www.ehow.com/how_2970_tie-tie.html) to how to buy a condominium (http://www.ehow.com/how_111174_buy-condominium.html)
• For more about how to do something see the Know-How_Wiki (http://www2.iro.umontreal.ca/~paquetse/cgi-bin/wiki.cgi?Know-How_Wiki) (down, jan. 2005, will come back)
• For more about how to perform a specific task in linux, see Linux HOWTOs (LDP) (http://www.tldp.org/)
• For more about how to perform a specific task in Pick-style, see MultiValue HOWTOs (http://www.pickwiki.com/cgi-bin/wiki.pl)
• http://www.soyouwanna.com/