How do transistors work in calculators and computers?
In practice, you don’t need to know any of this stuff about electrons and holes unless you’re going to design computer chips for a living! All you need to know is that a transistor works like an amplifier or a switch, using a small current to switch on a larger one. But there’s one other thing work knowing: how does all this help computers store information and make decisions? We can put a few transistor switches together to make something called a >logic gate, which compares several input currents and gives a different output as a result. Logic gates let computers make very simple decisions using a mathematical technique called Boolean algebra. Your brain makes decisions the same way. For example, using “inputs” (things you know) about the weather and what you have in your hallway, you can make a decision like this: “If it’s raining AND I have an umbrella, I will go to the shops”. That’s an example of Boolean algebra using what’s called an AND “operator” (the word operator is just a b
