A good answer might be:

The processor.

When a program is running on a computer the processor is constantly performing very detailed electronic operations. For example, one such operation is to read a byte of data from main memory into a part of the processor. Another operation is to test if one of the bits in the byte is a "1" bit. Most processors can perform several hundred types of small operations like these.

Click Here to see a picture of a Pentium processor.

And that is all that a processor can do--it has a set of electronic operations that it was built to perform. It is a machine, and can do nothing else. These little electronic operations are performed one at a time. But millions of them are performed per second. One of the important ideas of computer science is that a large number of small operations can add up to a large and useful action.

Everything that a processor can do must be build out of these tiny operations! Luckily for us, beginning programmers do not need to know these these bothersome details. With a programming language like Java, you can program a computer without knowing electronic details.

QUESTION 2:

(Thought question:) When you click on a hyperlink (such as the one below) your Web browser (a computer program) finds and displays a new page. About how many detailed electronic operations does the processor perform in doing this?

• 1
• 10
• 100
• 100,000