Limitless power with limited numbers

Yesterday I mentioned that computers all come down to crunching numbers. In a way, computers came into being by people not wanting to do math themselves. (I can totally appreciate this- my ability to do even basic math in my head goes down as the number of digits involved goes up!)

You probably already know that computers are electric; You have to plug them in for them to work. What they do with that electricity is amazing. Sparing you the the techno-babble for a second, the electricity goes into the different parts of the computer and causes teeny-tiny bits to become electrically charged. If something has a charge it is called a 1. Yes, simply a one. If something does NOT have a charge, it is a 0.

This is why when you see movies like the Matrix you see all these scrolling 1's and 0's on the screen. Yes, it's mostly to make it look cool, but they're trying to invoke a sense of computing on the most basic of levels. It is from this collection of ones and zeros that you are able to read this now. That we're able to watch funny baby videos on YouTube, or chat with old friends on Facebook or any number of things. Pretty amazing, huh?

Practical Tip of the Day: All websites have addresses- just like houses- and, just like a house, you need to know it's address to get to it. If I want to visit my friend Sarah, but don't know her address, what could I do? Well, I would look her up in the Whitepages! Website addresses are often able to be found in search engines. These use complex math to find the most popular pages that match what you search for, and give you the results. Google is one of the most popular search engines, but there are others like Bing and Yahoo.