Computer Hardware
By Hannah Cowie
Hard drive/SSD
Hard drives are the older version of SSD's (Solid State Drive). SSD's are thinner, lighter and not as fragile as hard drives. These machines have a disk and an arm inside (a bit like a grammarphone) the arm writes information onto the disk to save it and reads it to play or show it. Below are pictures of a hard drive and a SSD
Optical Drive
An optical drive is something like a CD player. The three optical drives availible now are CD players (which only play CD's), DVD players (which play only CD's and DVD's), and Blu-Ray (which plays all three). Blu-ray earns it's name because it writes the information with a blue laser. An optical drive works by playing and reading a disk and transmitting sound and usually images. Some optical drives even let you write information to discs as well as just playing them.
Moniter
Moniters are the colours that you see on a computer or a TV screen. The computer/TV shows colours according to the disc you put in it and is read by the hard drive or the site on the computer that you are visiting.
CPU
CPU stands for Central Processing Unit. It is like the 'brain' of the computer. Or you could imagine it as a person who is in chardge of lots of workers. The person orders the others to do things likebring up the internet or play discs. if you have a dual processer there are two people so you can do two things at once and quad processers so there are four people and you can do four things at once. In mobiles you normally have Quad processers.
RAM
RAM (Random Access Memory) allow you to save more informaion to your computer. When you turn the computer off then the memory disappears but when you turn it on it reappears. This means that you have a quicker computer. Think of it as someone decorating a cake. RAM is the table or tray depending on how big the RAM is. When the person wants to have a different colour of icing sugar or sprinkles or chocolate buttons RAM allows the person to reach over all the other things to get it rather than having to move to get it.
Motherboards
A motherboard connects all of the computer together. It can be thought of as the backbone of the computer. It could also be thought of as a road. The CPU is in the middle and the motherboard is in the middle giving out its orders and the orders run along the road to the destination that the CPU has sent them to.
Inputs and outputs
An input is what starts an electric process. Something that starts this could be a mouse or a keyboard. The output is when (for example) we click the mouse and a window comes up or type on the keyboard and words appear. It is the result of the input. An example of an output device is a LED or a buzzer.