Technology

Explainers in Technology

• Technology

  Artificial intelligence

  What AI means today: software that learns patterns from examples instead of following written rules, and…

  4 min read
• Technology

  Fingerprint and face unlock

  How fingerprint and face unlock work: a scan becomes a pattern of numbers kept on the phone and compared each…

  3 min read
• Technology

  Bluetooth

  How Bluetooth uses short-range radio to connect headphones, keyboards and speakers, why pairing is needed…

  3 min read
• Technology

  The cloud

  What the cloud is: someone else's computers in a data centre that you reach over the internet, why that is…

  3 min read
• Technology

  How a computer works

  How a computer works: a processor following instructions, memory for now, storage for later, and software…

  4 min read
• Technology

  Contactless payments

  How contactless cards and phones pay by tapping: a chip powered by the reader, a one-time code for each…

  3 min read
• Technology

  Digital cameras

  How a digital camera focuses light with a lens onto a sensor made of millions of tiny light meters, and how…

  3 min read
• Technology

  Email

  How email works: your message passes through mail servers, how an address is read, where messages wait, and…

  3 min read
• Technology

  The internet

  What the internet is: a worldwide network of networks, how data travels in small packets, and what happens…

  4 min read
• Technology

  Mobile phones

  How a mobile phone connects to the network through radio masts split into cells, how calls follow you as you…

  4 min read
• Technology

  Passwords and encryption

  How passwords are stored, why long unique ones matter, and how encryption scrambles information so only the…

  3 min read
• Technology

  Printers

  How printers work: inkjets fire tiny droplets of ink, lasers use static electricity and heated powder, and 3D…

  3 min read
• Technology

  QR codes and barcodes

  How barcodes and QR codes store information as patterns, how a scanner reads them, why QR codes survive…

  3 min read
• Technology

  Radio and broadcast TV

  How radio and Freeview TV are broadcast as waves from a transmitter, how the signal carries sound and…

  3 min read
• Technology

  Satellites

  What satellites are, how they stay in orbit, the difference between low and geostationary orbits, and what…

  4 min read
• Technology

  How a screen makes a picture

  How a screen makes a picture from millions of tiny red, green and blue dots, how pixels and refresh rate…

  3 min read
• Technology

  Search engines

  How a search engine finds pages by following links, builds an index like a book's, and ranks results from its…

  3 min read
• Technology

  Hard drives and SSDs

  How hard drives use spinning magnetic discs and SSDs use flash chips to store files, why SSDs are faster, and…

  3 min read
• Technology

  Streaming and compression

  How streaming plays video and music while it arrives, why buffering happens, and how compression makes films…

  3 min read
• Technology

  Wi-Fi

  How Wi-Fi uses radio waves to carry the internet from your router to your devices, why it has a limited…

  4 min read