**I ended up asking a few questions actually so I don’t expect everyone to sit and answer all but if you happen to know the answer to one I would love to know**
For example internet
Say someone on the other side of the world sent you a message, what would that look like?
*Knowing nothing, I’m going to guess what I think please correct me (I’m just guessing so you can see what I am asking because I don’t know how to ask the question like the question sounded weird but idk how else to say it)*
So my guess, probs 100% wrong
– so person touches phone screen to type and send message
– screen receives some sort of heat signals or something and on each area of the screen it has some sort of information saying what to do when the person touches that spot
– the information goes to the computer in the phone and then relays the information onto the screen
– then when sending a message or whatever, whisky on wifi or phone network the information goes from the phone to the wifi/phone network through electrical currents in the air????? That look like what?? Is it like electrons that connect like a tunnel and it moves from the phone to the router/modem/phone tower???
– then it goes to the satellite?? By the same type of tunnel thing?
– then from satellite to other persons router/phone tower?
– then that information goes to their phone computer
– then the computer sends signal to their screen
That was probably so wrong lmfao please correct me and also tell me what it actually looks like if we were to see the electricity or whatever is happening
Edit: *whilst not whisky lmfao
Edit: also how do computers have lights? Like say a phone. If you turn it off no light, turn it in it has light on the screen. So does the electricity from when you charge it get stored somewhere in the phone then when you turn it on the electricity goes into the tiny squares that make up the screen? Then how does it change colours? And if that’s not correct how does it work?
Also just computers in general. First off who found out how to make a computer. What were they doing to do that like, how did they know how to get electricity (or whoever “found” electricity first) and make a box thing with microchips etc. Wtf is a microchip and how did they make it and put information on it. Just literally the whole thing computers are so complicated and I don’t get how someone could invent that.
In: 9
So first, touch screens use capacitance to sense touch, not heat. It can be thought of as sensing the electrical charge of an object (that is in no way what is actually happening, but explaining it would take a long time).
Second, wireless signals such as WiFi are a type of light, not electricity. The electromagnetic radiation (light) is at a frequency your eyes can’t see. But antennas interact with this light to create a detectable electrical signal.
Satellite signals are similar to WiFi, but a different frequency.
Most consumer wireless devices don’t have directional antennas, they spray the light in all directions similar to the flame on a candle. So strength of the signal actually drops significantly over distance. Satellite dishes and other specialized directional antennas point the signal in a specific direction, similar to a flashlight. The signal still spreads out over distance, but not nearly as much as the non-directional antennas.
If you are trying to visualize whats happening, its like a light bulb shining. How brightly it illuminates the area around it is comparable to signal strength. Objects can block light creating a shadow, but also reflect it so that the light can be seen without being able to see the bulb directly. You can think of the 0’s and 1’s as the light either blinking on and off rapidly, or rapidly changing between two colors (again, that is NOT what is actually happening to send the data, its just an easy visualization).
Signals sent over metal wires such as an ethernet cable are electrical pulses at a relatively low voltage. This signal is interpreted as a 0 or 1 by the receiving computer.
Fiber optic cables use electromagnetic radiation (light), but pulse it down a slender optical fiber that channels the light without letting spread out, so the signal maintains strength over longer distances.
So to combine it, your phone senses the capacitance of your finger touching the screen. It follows the programmed instructions in its software to send your message. The phone then uses its antenna to wirelessly transmit that message to a local cell tower. The cell tower uses electrical pulses to send that message to a high capacity fiber line. The fiber line translates the electrical pulses into pulses of light that travel down the fiber optic line. Those arrive at a central satellite uplink. This takes the pulses of light and turns them back into electrical signals. It then turns the electrical signals into a directional electromagnetic signal (light) that goes to a satellite. The satellite receives that signal, turns it into an electrical signal to process in the satellite, then takes it and uses its antenna to turn it back into another electromagnetic signal sent to a different satellite center on Earth. From there the process is basically the same, but reversed until the message reaches the recipient.
I’m making some assumptions on how the infrastructure is set up and simplifying the process massively. The details are very complicated. Most people don’t recognize just how incredible the global information system we have is.
Thats pretty close, is a good surface level understanding.
The screen detects your finger press by pressure and difference of potential.
The message is sent from your phone to a cell tower using a signal, it doesnt look like anything. its invisible to the human eye. That tower receives the signal and forwards it on in the form of switching and routing equipment, normally through a cable. Cell towers dont usually talk to a satellite, but there is no reason they cannot, mostly it depends on where the tower is located. The switching and routing equipment will route the message to another cell tower, and send it to the receiving phone.
When you charge the phone its stored in a battery, that will power the screen.
There wasnt one person who invented a computer, it was many people over the course of time. An abacus can be considered a simple computer by how it manipulates numbers. We just designed more complex machines over time, and as electricity became available, it was just another tool we could use to make more complex machines.
Since you’re asking what things look like, I’ll try to give you some visuals.
Your phone screen uses capacitance to tell where your finger tip is. Honestly, it is easier to simply accept this as magic 🙂. If you have ever used a [lamp that you could turn on/off](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TbHBHhZOglw) just by touching it somewhere, then that is the same kind of thing. There’s lots of those sensors in your phone screen. [This](https://electronics.howstuffworks.com/iphone2.htm) briefly explains it.
The OS on your phone is always listening for taps. It receives taps as (x, y) coordinates from the screen, then it uses software to determine what do with that data. Maybe nothing. Maybe turn some pixels on and off. Maybe send a message to the cell network. Maybe add the letter “a” to a textbox if you pressed “a”. It all depends.
To communicate with Wifi or the cell network, yes, data travels over electromagnetic waves in the air. For ELI5 purposes, Wifi and cell signals work the exactly the same. There is an antenna in your phone that looks like [this](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted-F_antenna) or [this](https://www.nano-di.com/blog/2019-designing-a-microstrip-patch-antenna-prototype-how-3d-printing-can-help). When your phone applies a voltage to the antenna, the antenna interferes with the electromagnetic field (i.e. sends out waves of energy), which looks like [this](https://d3i71xaburhd42.cloudfront.net/f2e8f06fa52797cabf652797c66f4c44cb5cc0f7/9-Figure7-1.png). Matching antennas exist inside your Wifi router and in the cell tower, which receive these signals. The inside of a [cell antenna](https://blog.thebrokerlist.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Pole-2.jpg) looks like [this](https://forums.wirelessadvisor.com/threads/any-cell-antenna-inside-pictures.80026/).
If you send a message over Wifi or cell network, it ends up on the regular internet. (Almost every single cell tower is connected to the internet.) There are some places where internet data travels into space (like this [uplink station](http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3768/10782426365_9454dc8c91_c.jpg)) or over different types of networks (like a [microwave network](https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2016/11/microwave-tower-1.jpg), or between satellites, which have antennas like [this](http://www.rocketstem.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/5139146093_e04fb6bf1e_o.jpg)). Mostly though, it’s just regular old wires connecting everything.
Eventually, your message will arrive at some antenna (either another cell tower antenna or some other Wifi antenna) and the whole thing happens in reverse to get that message to your friend.
Unless you have satellite internet, or a satellite phone, then your messages don’t go through satellite. Your cell phone connects to a tower, then the tower sends your message by land based wire or fiber optic network to the nearest tower to whoever your message is for.
When you charge your phone you are charging a battery in the phone. Batteries make electricity by way of a chemical reaction. When you charge a rechargeable battery that chemical reaction basically runs in reverse.
You’ve asked a lot of questions, you might want to split them out into their own posts.
well in a phone there are two common screen technologies available. lets pretend electricity is water and voltage is pressure, then start with what produces light here. An LED can be thought of as a sprinkler head on a garden hose if there is no pressure nothing comes out, no light. when you want the sprinkler to spray you turn the valve on the hose partly until the sprinkler has enough pressure to spray, if you want more light you keep turning the valve and the sprinkler will spray more.
OLED displays use a grid of millions of three different tiny LEDs. those three being Red, Green, and Blue (RGB). when it turns on only red you see red, if it turns on red and blue you see magenta since they are so small our eyes kinda blend them together as one dot, blue is blue, blue and green is cyan, green is green, finally green and red make yellow. combinations of these can “make” almost any color we can see. there are loads of websites and free tools where you can play with sliders for each color to better see that in action
LCDs (liquid crystal display) are tough for me to explain so ill come back to it later or someone else might explain those properly.
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