What is a computer?

Count the computers in your home. Most people say one — the laptop on the table.

Now count again: the phone in your pocket, the smart TV, the washing machine that beeps when it finishes, the microwave, the ATM down the street, the billing machine at the kirana shop. Every single one of those is a computer.

So a computer clearly isn't just "a screen with a keyboard". It's something else — and once you know what, you'll start spotting them everywhere.

Every computer is made of two things working together.

Hardware is the part you can touch — the screen, the keyboard, the chip inside, the buttons on the microwave. Drop it and it breaks.

Software is the set of instructions telling that hardware what to do. You can't touch it. It's the app, the game, the program that decides what happens when you press the button.

Hardware without software is a very expensive paperweight. Software without hardware has nothing to run on. Neither one is a computer by itself.

Notice: the hardware changes completely from row to row — but every row has both.

Walk around your home and find five computers that don't look like computers. Skip the obvious laptop and phone.

For each one, write down:

1. What is the hardware you can touch?
2. What is the software deciding what it does?

Hint: if it has buttons and does something different depending on which one you press, there's software inside.