What Makes a Touch Screen Work?
Touch screens are becoming more common on electrical devices as technology improves, facilitating the manufacture of touch screens of all sizes at cost-effective rates, and as people become accustomed to using various types of touch screens on their phones, computers and PDAs. Different types of touch screens are manufactured for different purposes, but they all use principles of electricity and delicate sensors to work.
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Definition
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Touch screens are screens that users can interact with by touching them with a bare finger. This allows manufacturers to make larger screens using the room once taken by buttons, and it lets users control icons and objects on the screen itself rather than using buttons to do so. While original touch screens used infrared technology, touch screens today use various types of electrical sensors.
Electrical Current
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A small electrical current runs through the human body. Likewise, a small current runs through the background layers of a touch screen. When a user touches the screen with a finger, the two currents connect, and the screen is able to read where the person has touched it. This current is far too low to even be felt by the human body, but the delicate sensors of the touch screen layers can pinpoint where it is.
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Resistive Touch Screens
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Resistive touch screens are among the cheapest and most common versions of the technology. These screens use several different layers of material through which a current passes when a user touches the outer conductive layer. This creates contact between two circuits and closes a switch, sending a signal to the software. Resistive touch screens can sense only one touch at a time.
Capacitive Touch Screens
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Capacitive touch screens are more expensive than resistive versions, but they are also much more durable and are able to sense multiple points of contact at one time. These screens are constantly charged with a small amount of voltage. When a user touches the screen, some of the voltage passes into his body, creating a spot of lower voltage. The software senses these spots of low voltage and interprets them as contact. Capacitive touch screens must be used with bare skin.
Controllers
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Controllers are general software devices that take the data the touch screen produces and turns the information into useful data for the computer systems the user is trying to operate. Without the controller applications, the touch screen would not be able to communicate with the device and the screen would not work at all.
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References
- Photo Credit Staying in Touch image by Kathy D from Fotolia.com
