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Learn how transistors work in an electric circuit in this free home maintenance video.
Much of the progress in the past 60 years has been because of the success of the transistor. Invented in the 1940s, it replaced vacuum tubes in televisions, radios and other electronic equipment....
A transistor uses a small voltage or current to direct the flow of a much larger current. A field-effect transistor uses an electric field to control the conductivity of a semiconducting material....
The age of digital electronics has come to be one of the most significant developments in the history of society. What were once manual and time-consuming tasks and processes have become automated...
Computer chips are a necessary part of every computer. Without computer chips, computers would still be the size of a house or whole room. The invention of the computer chip enabled nearly...
Most people with think that an electrical circuit is a complex thing. As you get to understand the parts involved, it seem less complicated. This goes the same for computer parts, motherboards and...
Flash memory can be found in many different types of electronic devices. It is the preferred memory source because of its speed and reliability. From video game consoles to digital cameras, flash...
Microprocessors have become the movers and shakers of our everyday world. We use them in computers, televisions, watches, microwaves and practically every other electronic device. Their...
Every computer, whether a personal computer on your desktop or the computer inside your car, has a processor which performs all of the calculations needed to run software programs. A processor is...
Your computer runs on them, as does everything from an automatic coffee brewer to your new car--microprocessors. But many people do not understand what makes these small devices so integral to our...
To look at them, switches are simple. Your house, workplace and school each probably have a dozen or more switches built into the walls to turn lights and wall sockets on and off. The most...
Alan Dower Blumlien assembled a working stereo system in the late 1930s and is generally considered to be the Father of Real Stereo. The stereophonic recording process is an attempt to re-create...
An audio amplifier is a device used to increase the volume of sound with low power so that it can be used in a loudspeaker. It is generally the final step in an audio feedback chain, or the...
Modern communication and electronic devices have a strong connection to the invention of the vacuum tube (amplifier). Without this invention and its subsequent improvements, many of the devices...
The invention of the transistor made modern electronic equipment possible. Transistors are a key component in computer microchips and are used to control simple home appliances, like washing...
SmartMedia is a type of removable drive used to back up information saved on the hard drive of a computer or to transfer information quickly from one computer to another including music files,...
Memory chips are a type of volatile memory--memory that needs continuous power to operate. The chips are very fast, but lose their information as soon as the computer is turned off. They are used...
Light lands on the lens of the camera. The lens focuses the light onto a semiconductor device made out of silicon. Silicon can contain electricity without conducting it as long as it is mixed with...
Amplifiers are used to produce sound we can hear from a source we may not be able to hear or hear well, such as from an electric guitar, a compact disc player or a turntable. The electric guitar,...
Unlike magnetic hard drives, solid state hard drives have no moving parts and do not rely on magnetic fields to store data. Because they use electrical current, rather than motors and magnets, to...
USB card readers are small devices that connect to a USB port to read portable media cards. They can accept one or many formats of media cards, such as SD, xD or CompactFlash. If your computer...
Transistors are based mostly on silicon cut into slices and made into semi-conductors which are then exposed to special chemicals. Discover how transistors work with tips from a math and science...
A relay is a type of switch used inside electrical circuits to control a large electric current with a much smaller one. Relays are used in many circuits including power supplies and counting...
There are several types of Metal Oxide Semiconductor Field-Effect Transistors, also known as MOSFETs. MOSFETs are devices used as transistors in analog or digital circuits. They can either switch...
In modern electronic systems, the bipolar transistor quickly replaced the vacuum tube in all but high power applications. Miniaturized and mass produced, the transistor in its many forms is the...
A transistor is a device in electronics that is used to switch or amplify signals. Transistors are composed of semiconductor material, which is a type of material that is not fully a conductor or...
With the ever-growing market of today's computer industry, it is oftentimes a chore to keep up with every model and type of hardware released. Computer processors or CPUs are no different in...
A microprocessor, or central processing unit (CPU), is an internal hardware component that performs the mathematical calculations required for computers to run programs and execute...
An amplifier takes the tiny electric signal produced by a guitar, an electronic keyboard, other musical instrument or even a stereo, and magnifies it to an audible level. It does this by sending...
A transistor is a solid state device used to amplify a signal or serve as a switch. Transistors are referred to as solid state because they do not contain electro-mechanical components and, thus,...
Transistors are semiconductors that control the amount of current flowing through a circuit. The current is drawn from a voltage that is connected to it. You can use transistors for switching,...
Transistors are somewhat outdated electronic components that were most commonly used in radios. They mainly function as amplifiers of electric voltage.
A microchip is a collection of a large number of transistors in a very small package, and there are a couple of basic function of these transistors. Find out how microchip transistors function as...
A microprocessor is the part of a computer that does the actual "computing" -- in other words, processing information as opposed to storing or moving it. Since their inception in the 1970s, their...
TFT refers to the material technology behind most LCD screens. It's not different from LCD, merely one aspect of the technology as a whole.
A computer is, in the most elemental terms possible, a collection of "on" and "off" switches that intermingle in an organized way to perform a function. This simplicity might not have much...
Ever since the first transistor was invented in 1925, many different forms and versions of the transistor have surfaced, each providing similar functions with differing characteristics due to...
In 1956, the Nobel Prize in Physics went to three American Physicists, Walter Houser Brattain, John Bardeen, and William Bradford Shockley. These physicists designed the first transistor in 1947,...
TFT LCD stands for "thin film transistor, liquid crystal display." LCD's are flat-panel displays that are used in most of today's new cell phones and HD (high definition) televisions and computer...
There are two basic types of electricity: alternating current (AC) and direct current (DC). AC switches directions dozens of times every second, going from negative to positive and back again. ...
An inverter or converter is a device designed to convert direct current (DC) power into alternating current (AC) power. DC power only flows in one direction, while AC switches from negative to...
A transistor is a electronic conductor. Usually, a transistor has three connecting prongs attached to a conducting material. They are used to amplify a signal. Transistors are found in essentially...
The first transistor was invented in 1947 by John Bardeen and Walter Brattain, who were employees of Bell Telephone Laboratories. In an experiment intended to gain an understanding of how...
Transistors are semiconductor devices with at least three terminals, where a small current or voltage through one terminal is used to control the current flow through the others. They may be...
Transistors are electrical devices vital to circuit boards and many modern electronic devices. They occur in an array of shapes, sizes and materials, but generally all transistors work to either...
Transistors are ubiquitous in modern life. Although we don't see as many visible transistors in electronics as in the past, there are far more transistors in modern devices than in older devices....
According to North Allegheny, the microprocessor is one of the greatest technological inventions of mankind. Microprocessors are used in electronic devices such as a personal computer, cell phone,...
Metalloids occupy a small but interesting segment of the periodic table. Neither conductors nor insulators, metalloids exhibit properties halfway between metals such as copper and nonmetals such...
The transistor is considered by many historians to be the greatest invention of the 20th century. Not only did it miniaturize many electronic devices, it accelerated the development of...
Transistors are semiconductor devices that have at least three terminals. A small current or voltage through the middle terminal is used to control the current flow through the others. They...