computers

[BH]

I am curious about computers. How are the people who make them able to melt down sand and make computer chips and then able to make the computer chips take in information and later get it to come back out of the chip?

 

[Keith&Co.]

Magic. Sufficiently advanced magic is able to be recognized as technology, that's all.

 

[skepticalbip]

Computer scientists discovered that sand has memory just as homeopaths found that water has memory. Computer science is all about learning and using the right rituals and chants to make use of the sand's memory. Computer bugs occur when they fuck up the chant.

 

[James Brown]

How SemiConductors Work

 

[Loren Pechtel]

While the primary component is sand that's actually the substrate. The working bits are very careful contamination of that sand.

 

[skepticalbip]

^ ^

Actually most sand is silicon dioxide while the base of semiconductors is pure silicon. It is apparently more energy efficient to mine for viens of pure silicon than it is to process sand to remove the oxygen. But you are right that it is the doping of the silicon that makes it magic.

 

[Malintent]

more evidence of scientific fraud... obviously it is all too complicated and must just be another once of those scientifical justatheories that we shouldn't believe in.

 

[thebeave]

Actually, its all just Hollywood magic done on a sounds stage. Its impossible that any human being could understand or create something as incredibly complicated as a computer chip.

 

[Under the Rose]

My, you are a helpful bunch. Perhaps the OP would have better success doing a search than challenging the august body at this forum, lol.

 

[NobleSavage]

Basically like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdcKwOo7dmM (part 1)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFzsyQOTXbM (part 2)

Times a few billion and you have a modern computer chip.

 

[steve_bnk]

There is no simple answer.

At a high level conceptually computers are a Turing Machine.

At the physical level

Electromagetics
Solid Sate Physics
Digital Logic
Electric Circuits

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_Machine

'.....an unlimited memory capacity obtained in the form of an infinite tape marked out into squares, on each of which a symbol could be printed. At any moment there is one symbol in the machine; it is called the scanned symbol. The machine can alter the scanned symbol and its behavior is in part determined by that symbol, but the symbols on the tape elsewhere do not affect the behavior of the machine. However, the tape can be moved back and forth through the machine, this being one of the elementary operations of the machine. Any symbol on the tape may therefore eventually have an innings.[2] (Turing 1948, p. 3)...'44...'

In a modern computer the paper tape has become solid state memory. Turing's tape head/machine has become the Arithmetic Logic Unit, ALU, in the processor chip.

Turing's tape symbols have become binary numbers.

 

[Underseer]

I am curious about computers. How are the people who make them able to melt down sand and make computer chips and then able to make the computer chips take in information and later get it to come back out of the chip?

I don't understand how computers work, therefore I understand how computers work: by magic! Each action performed by your computer is a separate miracle performed by God, therefore I have proven the existence of God. [/theist]

 

[Peez]

I am curious about computers. How are the people who make them able to melt down sand and make computer chips and then able to make the computer chips take in information and later get it to come back out of the chip?

Hi BH,

The first thing that you have to realize is that a "silicon chip" is not just a chip of silicon. Someone coined the term "silicon chip", but what it really is is a set of electronic circuits mounted on a chip of silicon. You can mount such circuits on other material, but for various reasons silicon is commonly used.

Integrated circuit

Peez

 

[BH]

Thanks for all the replies. The links have helped me understand better.