ELI5: Digital data storage. How do physical aspects of the system translate into meaningful information?

I'm not a specialist, but it's all about electricity. A sensitive component sends a signal to other when something happens and this component sends to other that process and so on.

Let's say touch screens. You have components that are sensitive to touch. You touch them, it produces a electrical current. This current reaches another component that process this current, it's intensity, it's location, etc, and it reaches the core software that translates it to you. Temperature is much the same way. You have a component that produces a electric current of x intensity when temperature is y. If temperature raises to y+10, the current raises to, let's say, x+5. So, every 1 point increase in current means a 2° increase in temperature. And then you have a circuit specialised on processing this and calibrated to accurately translate the current chance to temperature change.

That's a analogue example, a change in the electric impulse is analogue to the temperature change. A digital impulse, on other hand, is made by 0s and 1s, typically, the 0 is when the signal is weak and 1 is when the signal is strong. It's also translated by a some kind of circuit, especially calibrated to make this translation.

/r/explainlikeimfive Thread