You might be wondering, what makes a computer work? A computer is composed of several different components that interact with one another in order to operate. A modern computer consists of the following components:

A computer has a processor, also known as the central processing unit (CPU), and memory, (RAMor Main Memory). The processor is responsible for executing instructions in a program; it stores programs temporarily while they are running on the processor. Aside from RAM, computers need a place to store information, to do this they write information onto the hard drive, (hard disk).


Say you were to create a text file, when you open up the text document, the RAM on the computer sets aside memory and will actively process the application. Any information that is contained within this application, in its current state, can be lost if the computer were to shut down. Information that is currently held in RAM memory is volatile. If you were to save the information onto your desktop for example, the information at that point in time is now nonvolatile because it is stored. Information that is nonvolatile will not be deleted if you were to shut down or restart your computer.


Have you ever wondered what your computer would say if it could speak? Well, if computers could speak, they would speak in 1’s and 0’s. Computers have their own language, Machine Language. Machine Language is composed of 0’s and 1’s, each of these values are called bits. A sequence of these bits will form an instruction that tells the computer what it needs to do. If we were to combine eight of these bits, we would form a byte.