I'm writing a term paper on the physics in computers but the damn search engine keeps giving me links to physics simulators for the computer. It's high school physics, so quantum references are not necessary, but some information on how the computer is actually wired and functions through physics would be greatly appreciated.
Physics in Computers?kawasaki
The problem with "the damn search engine" (it's a poor craftsman who blames his tools) is that computers are complex engineered systems, and physics only deals with elementary forms of matter. Anything else is too complex to deal with at that level, so you won't find much. A good tongue-in-cheek rule of thumb is that if it's bigger than a molecule and smaller than a planet, a physicist doesn't care about it.
The key component of a modern digital computer processor is the silicon transistor, so that's one thing you could research in terms of a physics project related to computers. Another might be the magnetic domains used to store information on hard disks. Or optical refraction for CD's. Or, for futuristic computers, Google the esoteric physics of Qubits in quantum computers.
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