Also, how is it different from a supercharger?
In: Engineering
Both turbocharger and supercharger are trying to compress air to fit more in the cylinders so you can spray more gas in and get more power out of the same volume of engine.
Supercharges are fed by a belt on the engine so they work at full capacity even at idle. Turbochargers are fed by the exhaust so they hurt a bit at idle and only really help at high RPMs
A standard [turbocharger](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/76/Turbocharger.jpg/2560px-Turbocharger.jpg) is two axial flow turbines bolted together. For the hot side on the left, the hot exhaust is forced in around the edge of the fan which forces the fan to spin and the gas escapes through the middle on the axis(axial fan afterall) that the fan is spinning around. This fan is on the same shaft as one on the air intake that works the exact opposite by taking in air in the center and flinging it out to the sides. Now when the piston opens the intake valve the air rushes in because its at pressure instead of being pulled in by the piston alone.
Superchargers come in a lot more varieties. Screw superchargers are basically two intertwined screws with a tiny gap between them. The threads on the screws grab the air and force it down between them into a higher pressure area.
Superchargers are nice in that they give you boost at low revs which is good for performance, but also eat up a good chunk of horsepower which hurts fuel economy.
Turbochargers extract wasted energy from the exhaust and use that instead of useful energy the pistons extracted so they can be used to improve the fuel economy of engines and let you use a much smaller engine for the same power/torque (see Ford EcoBoosts). Their main downside is not working across the power band but that has been resolved with a lot of modern designs that can move parts on the fly to change the turbo between a low resistance mode for efficient cruising and a high boost mode for high boost when needed
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