How do computers work?
This short article is designed to give you a layman’s view on how computers take electricity and turn that into computer games, word processing, sound and complex applications
At a fundamental level, electricity, transistors, and computers are very simple to understand and it all starts from magnets…
How Electricity works and how it Relates to Computers
Electricity drives computers (I think we all can all grasp that), but how it does that is quite simple and interesting.
Electricity uses the push/pull force of electromagnetism to force electrons down a power cord.
You’ve felt the push and pull of a magnet before, now just imagine that force pushing an electron (a particle that is in every atom) down a condensed copper tunnel. The movement, or pushing, of these electrons down an insulated tunnel creates force or energy A.K.A. electricity.
We simply take that principle and multiply times a billion by using fuel and mechanics to create super high-powered magnets that push an unfathomable amount of electrons down a way bigger copper wire.
How Electricity and the Advent of Transistors Paved the Way for Computers
When electrons travel through that copper wire that you call a Power Cord, the end result is that it hits transistors. A transistor is a little device that either allows the electrons to flow through it or stops electrons from flowing through. The transistor is allowing electrons to flow through (ON) or isn’t (OFF).
An ON transistor is known as a 1 and a transistor that is turned off, or blocking flow, is a 0
That 1 or 0 (also known as Binary Code), created by transistors is the basis of all computer coding. Computers take these billions of 1’s and 0’s and interpret them however we tell them to.
An Example of Binary Code –
101011 = A
while
101010 = B
And so and so on so forth
Programs which interpret binary code have gotten progressively smarter and have multiple layers (or OSI’s) but at their core, all they are doing is using billions of transistors that are simply ON or OFF and interpreting those 1’s and 0’s in whatever preset way we code a device
100101101 – Start Microsoft Word
001101010 – Close Microsoft Word
This of course, is a tremendously simplified take on electricity, transistors, and computers but it is a great base for understanding the more complex inner workings of the magical natural function of electricity and how we use electromagnet force to create all the technological marvels we see around us.
When you realize that every digital device you have is simply flowing electrons interacting with transistors, you realize that technology and computers aren’t really that impossible to understand at all!
So, How do Computes Work, the short and simple answer – Computers use lots of electrons and transistors
