Electronics and electric lighting

Electronics is the field of science and technology that creates devices which receive, transmit, process and store information with the help of electric signals. Today electronic devices work in phones, computers, medical equipment, cars and factory machines because they are fast, can sense even a weak signal and can be adapted to many tasks. Thanks to integrated circuits, which place thousands or millions of elements on one crystal, devices became much smaller and use far less energy; modern computers are built on such chips. A resistor (Latin resisto, “I resist”) limits the current in a circuit, and part of the electric energy turns into heat; resistors can be wire or non-wire, and those whose resistance changes with temperature are called thermistors, with light photoresistors, and with voltage varistors. A capacitor is an element that stores electric charge: it consists of two conducting plates separated by a dielectric, and the larger the plates and the closer they are, the greater its capacitance. Capacitors have fixed or variable capacitance and, by the material between the plates, are ceramic, mica, paper, air, electrolytic and other kinds.