From Nature to Computers

Name: From Nature to Computers
Rating: 4.3 (9 reviews)

Start from atoms to work our way up in creating transistors, logic gates and computers

Created bymohamad gharishvandi

Last updated 11/2023

English

What you'll learn

Structure of atoms
Conductors, insulators, semiconductors
Doping, n-type,p-type
Making switches from semiconductors
Transistors
Diodes

Course content

1 section • 16 lectures • 1h 49m total length

Building blocks of the Universe0:53
Explore how atoms differ by proton count, forming hydrogen, helium, lithium, and other elements in the periodic table, and how electrons occupy specific distances from the nucleus.
How to approach this course1:50
Enroll and pace the course to two weeks, then summarize concepts from memory, not notes, before optionally looking up details.
From atoms to electric field3:22
Explore how rubbing a comb or glass rod transfers charge and creates an electric field that can attract or repel objects, introducing the concepts of positive and negative charges.
Gravitational field and Electric field2:22
Explore how gravitational and hypothetical electric fields involve r^2 in the denominator, yielding F = g M m / r^2 and F = qE with E ∝ Q / r^2.
Conductors, insulators, semiconductors5:43
Explore how positive and negative charges create electric fields and how electrons move to charge objects, causing attraction, repulsion, and the distinction between conductors, insulators, and semiconductors.
Electronegativity, ionic and covalent bonds2:43
Explore how electronegativity drives ionic and covalent bonding, illustrated by Na and Cl transferring electrons to form ions and a crystal, and how similar electronegativities yield covalent and polar bonds.
Silicon and semiconductors4:52
Explore silicon's covalent bonds, shared four valence electrons to satisfy the octet, yielding a stable lattice with few free electrons, and understand current as charge flow, dq/dt.
Ohms law from a physics perspective2:48
Explore ohm's law from a physics perspective by linking voltage, field, and current through mobility and conductance, and explain how charge density and material properties set resistance.
Electrons and holes-free charges in silicon8:12
Explore silicon's covalent bonds that produce intrinsic silicon lacking free electrons at zero, and how temperature excites electrons across a band gap to form electrons and holes that drive current.
Doping-n-type and p-type6:17
Inject phosphorus into silicon to add free electrons and form n-type material, while boron creates holes to yield p-type silicon with holes as the majority carriers.
Pn junction diode11:02
Explore the pn junction diode, where diffusion of electrons and holes creates an electric field that reaches equilibrium, balancing diffusion and electric currents.
Capacitors3:19
See how two conductive plates form a capacitor that stores energy in the electric field when connected to a battery. Capacitance increases with plate area and decreases with distance.
Pn junction in reverse bias6:53
Under reverse bias, the PN junction enlarges its depletion region, opposing diffusion current, while the capacitor analogy shows decreasing capacitance as the depletion width grows.
Pn junction in forward bias9:58
Explain how a p-n junction behaves under forward bias, including diffusion, depletion region, and the diode acting as a switch around 0.7V, with n-type and p-type doping.
Transistors as switches19:18
Explore how mosfet transistors act as electronically controlled switches by modulating a gate voltage to form a conducting channel, with nmos and pmos configurations enabling digital and analog operations.
Creating gates using transistors-creating computers using gates20:10
Explore how transistors create logic gates, how the universal nand gate enables building memory, processors, and full computers from gates, memory, and the ALU.

Requirements

No requirement

Description

We start from atoms at the most fundamental level and explain what its made of, and how we distinguish them from one another, and work our way up in creating transistors as switches from atoms, and logic gates from transistors and computers from logic gates.

The best way to understand anything is to use as few abstraction as possible, thats why our lowest abstraction is atom. Then we explain what atom is made of, and we distinguish atoms from the number of protons that they have.

Then we introduce silicon atoms, and explain why its important for us, and how we create switches from it.

In general we could say this course could be categorized in 2 sections, one is, how to create an electronically controllable switch from atoms and second, how to create computers from switches, or how to create a universal logic gate from the electronic switch.

But the important thing that makes this course different from the others, is that we don't take anything for granted. Meaning at each turn we explain a concept and after understanding that concept we define the abstraction ourselves.

As an example we carry out some experiments and based on the results of that experiment we would create abstractions and move on to the next topic.

Who this course is for:

Anyone who wants to understand computer from fundamental concepts in an intuitive way