Almost everything electronic you own runs on tiny switches carved into silicon — a material that is neither a good conductor nor a good insulator, and whose in-between nature is precisely what makes modern computing possible. This episode explains what a semiconductor is, how a transistor works, and why refined sand quietly runs civilisation.

You'll come away understanding what makes silicon special, the trick of “doping” it, how transistors switch and amplify, and why making chips is one of the most demanding manufacturing feats humans have ever achieved.

Talking Science is sponsored by Kinsoft. Visit www.kinsoft.com.au

Further reading: Computer History Museum – “The Silicon Engine”; Royal Society of Chemistry – semiconductors; 2000 Nobel Prize in P ...