How do touch screens work?
In: Technology
By touch screens, I assume you mean modern phone touchscreens and not old Nintendo DS style touch screens. These are known as capacitance touch screens. Effectively, under the glass of a screen is a mesh that detects changes in electric fields. Since humans have slight electric fields, when we touch a screen we slightly change the electric field running under it. The phone can then detect where this change occurs with fantastic precision, and can even detect multiple changes at once (hence why you can use multiple fingers on a modern touch screen). It’s also why a scratches on a touch screen don’t impact the touch functionality, but breaks in the screen often do. The mesh behind the glass is what controls the touch, not the glass, and if it breaks, the touch functionality breaks.
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