What does a circuit (in a computer) do and how does it do it?
In: Technology
Do you mean an electric circuit? What it does is what all circuits do, which is to allow current to flow from one pole to another of some electric source like a battery or the wall outlet. What happens in between those poles varies wildly from application to application.
A heater has an element between the poles that warms up when electricity flows through it. An electric motor has a loop of wire around a magnet, and when electricity flows through it it makes the magnet spin.
A computer circuit is extremely more complicated. what happens when electricity flows through it is that a mind-boggling amount of tiny little switches, called transistors, switch state very fast.
From an purely electrical point of view, that is what happens. How all those tiny transistors switching state create the words you are reading on your screen is an altogether different question with a much, much more complicated answer.
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