SMART PHONE FROM SAND

Your smart phone mainly made up of pure sand-silicon. Yes, It is true. Mostly life forms are carbon based. But the electronic gadgets are silicon based (Today). Life forms are made of cells. But electronic goods are made of 'transistors'.

What is transistor? It has three parts Emitter, base and collector. We can give input signal (voltage) to any pair (eg: base and emitter) and get output voltage from another pair(emitter and collector). One can control output voltages using tiny input signals. Hence amplification is possible in it. Transistor can be used as a switch (ON and OFF ) . Hence Binary numbers (0 and 1 ) can be stored and manipulated by transistors. Transistors are found in thousands or even in millions in many electronic devices. Computers, internet, smartphone, Automobile electronics, Medical electronics, all made possible because of tiny transistors. Today transistors are hair-thin. Transistor is mainly made of silicon(sand), little boron and a little phosphorus. Transistor act by controlling the flow of electrons. Transistor can also be compared to a value in a water pipe. Before the invention of Transistor, vacuum tubes were used. They were bulky and consumed lot of electrical energy. (Long back, A crude computer was constructed using vacuum tubes ,switched on and the entire city voltage dropped).

The main electronic elements like transistor, Resistor, capacitor, inductor can be made using silicon. Hence it is possible to construct or fabricate entire electronic circuit on a thin silicon wafer. That is microchip. Today complex circuit with millions of electronic components is fabricated on a nail sized silicon wafer. Hence today's electronic gadgets are compact, powerful and cheap. Think, how many gadgets the smartphone made extinct.

Tomorrow, the transistor could be a few atoms thick. DNA may replace silicon memory, High level quantum physics will play some role in electronics.
Anyway, clever use of sand, invention of transistor, design of microchip brought in information and technological revolution.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Comments

THE EARTH, A SUPER ORGANISM

JOIN MY COURSE: "Become a programmer in a day with python" A man called 'love lock' (what a name) proposed a theory called Gaia theory, named after Greek Goddess. It says, "Earth is a self-regulating organism like a human being. The organic life in it interacts with in-organic matter and maintains atmosphere, temperature and environment". Hence the earth is still suitable for the life to thrive. Imagine, in a particular place, there are lot of flowers. Some flowers are white and some are darkly coloured. We know, white reflects light and heat while dark absorbs the same. White flowers can thrive in hot climate. But dark flowers requires cold climate. The absorption and reflection balances and the environment reaches average, warm temperature at which both the flowers can co-exist. This is the essence of "Gaia" theory. On our earth, ...

DISORDER IS THE "ORDER OF THE DAY"

Imagine a balloon full of air. The air molecules are moving randomly inside the balloon. Let us pierce the balloon with a pin. The air rushes out. Why should not the air molecules stay inside the balloon safely and ignore the little hole? That is not the way the world works. The molecules always "want to occupy as many states as possible". Hence the air goes out in the open to occupy more volume. The things always goes into disorder (entropy) and the disorder increases with time. The above statement is what we call "second law of thermodynamics". Consider a cup of coffee on the table. Suppose the heat from entire room flows to your cup of coffee, the coffee will boil and the rest of the room will freeze. Freezing means bringing things to order and arrangement. It violates the second law. Hence it will never happen. Hence heat must flow from high ...

CASINO'S GAME

Let us find out how the casino survives with mathematics. Say, your friend invite you for a game of dice. You must bet (wager) 2 dollars. If you roll 'six' you will get back 8 dollars. The game will go on for 30 rounds. All sounds good. The probability of rolling 'six' is 1/6. Since the game will be played for 30 times, the 'expected win' is 30*1/6 = 5. That is, you are expected to win 5 rounds out of 30. Hence your gain will be 5 * 8 =40 dollars. ok. This also implies that you will loose 25 rounds. Hence your loss will be 25*2 =50 dollars. Your net gain will be gain-less = 40-50 = -10 dollars. For 30 rounds, the loss is -10 dollars, Hence, for one round =-10/30 = -1/3 dollars. There will be a loss of -1/3 or 0.33 dollars per round. It is not a fair game. Let us make a simple formula to calculate 'Pa...

sciencecapsules

Search This Blog