Transistors and Moore’s Law Task

Work your way through the Moore’s Law movie and find the answers to the questions below.

1. In which year was the transistor first invented?

1947

2. Write down the names of three electronic devices that you own which contain transistors

i Iphoneii laptop/ computer

iii Ipad/ Ipod

3. List at least three advantages that transistors have over valvesi Way smaller

ii Fast

iii Use very little power

4. The first CPUs contained around 2,000 transistors. How many might you find on a CPU today?

2,000,000,000

5. Which is smaller, the tip of a human hair or a transistor?Transistor

6. Transistors can act as a digital switch inside the CPU. They can be either …. or …..

on or off

7. Briefly explain how transistors can represent binary dataTransistors act like switches, it is either ON or OFF. So ON can represent

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binary 1, and OFF can represent binary 0

8. Transistors can be combined within the CPU to do different jobs. Give two examples of jobs they might do.

i Process data

ii Store data

9. Gordon Moore made an observation that was so accurate it became known as Moore’s Law. What does Moore’s Law say?

Every two years, the amount of transistors in a computer chip will double

10. What is the problem with Moore’s Law in the future?

As transistors shrink towads the atomic size, it will not work proporly

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