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The World at the Tip of a Needle
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Mr. Bijoy Dey*
Email: bijoydey030@gmail.com
What is the storage capacity of this device? is a very frequent question we ask our friends when we see a new mobile or laptop with him or when we want to buy these devices. The answer generally is 16–32 gigabytes for mobiles and 1–2 terabytes for laptops. Everyone knows, the larger the storage capacity (memory) of the device, the more we can download videos, songs, movies, etc. So, now let’s focus on how does this memory works. Is it the way our brain works? Or something different?
If we consider a computer as a living being, then the electricity is the blood and the hardware are the organs. The hard drive is the part of the brain (hardware) where memory (data) is stored. The hard drive is coated with a magnetic material that can be magnetized or
demagnetized using electricity. Whenever you want to save something on your device (hard drive), then actually you are sending a certain patternofelectricitythatmagnetizesaspecific part of the hard drive and data are saved in that region. The way this electricity forms a unique pattern is called a binary system. In this method of data encoding and decoding, two binary digits are used “0” and “1”, where “1” implies a magnetized domain and “0” implies a nonmagnetized domain. This “0” or “1” is called a digit of information. Eight digits of this kind constitute 1 byte, and 1024 bytes are equivalent to 1 kilobyte, 1024 kilobytes form 1 megabyte, and so on (Chart 1). The key point for any material to work as a storing medium is that the material needs to be magnetically bi- stable, i.e., it can attain two different magnetic
* Mr. Bijoy Dey, PhD Scholar from Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Madhya Pradesh, is pursuing his research on “Magnetic Bistable Molecules”. His popular science story entitled “The World at the Tip of a Needle” has been selected for AWSAR Award.