Wires
We have all heard that computers think in ones and zeros but what they actually use is high and low. If you crack one open you can see that computers have wires (those little shiny lines on the green boards are called "traces" and carry electricity like a wire). These wires carry electricity and "one" is represented by high voltage and "zero" by low voltage. It's that simple.
These high and low states of a wire can be thought of differently depending on the application. When controlling a light, for example, it would make sense to call high "on" and low "off" because that's what happens to the light when connected to the wire. However, when doing number crunching then we use the terms "one" and "zero" instead. Likewise, when talking about logic (as we will later on this page) we'll use the terms "true" and "false". But no matter what terms we use, it's still really just comes down to high and low voltage. The terminology just helps understand things better depending on the context.
But wires by themselves aren't very interesting, we need a way to control them. Let's continue to learn how wires come together to start making decisions.
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