How do computers work?
Computers contain thousands of tiny electrical switches located in microchips. As expected, each switch can be either off or on. The various combinations of which switches are off and which are on dictate what the computer is doing at any given moment. You can imagine with thousands of switches operating there is virtually an infinite number of combinations of “offs” and “ons”. This explains why computers can function in so many different ways – from a game machine to a word processor! If you think of a single light switch, there are only two distinct conditions which are possible, off or on. What happens if there are two switches controlling two separate lights? We’ll call the lights “A” and “B”. Now there are four distinct conditions which are possible as listed below: · condition 0) both lights off · condition 1) light “A” on and light “B” off · condition 2) light “A” off and light “B” on · condition 3) both lights on Notice that our numbering system starts from zero. This is becaus
