At 09:51 AM 9/23/1998 Elizabeth Boston wrote:
>
>I have to give a speech explaining the difference between disk
>space and Ram memory. While I understand this topic, I have not
>yet come up with an explanation that my 13 year old daughter can
>grasp.
>
>Does anyone have an easy to understand analogy for how ram works?
>


Elizabeth:

A common analogy is that RAM is like a classroom blackboard
with information written on it. It will get erased and the information
will then be lost .  The hard drive is like having the information
written on a sheet of paper on the bulletin board, where it is more
permanent but can still be removed.

A better analogy for how RAM works is:

Think of a hotel with many floors and 8 rooms on each
floor. The manager assigns guests to room, or not. If a
guest is in a room, the light is on. The manager wants to
send a message to someone across the river, in ASCII,
so he assigns rooms accordingly.

If you stand across the river in the evening, you can see
lights on in the hotel, floor by floor, i.e.:

        off, on, off, off, on, off, off, off
        off, on, on, off, on, off, off, on
        . . . . .

If the power goes out the message is lost. The manager
has the bellboy bang on every door every so often to keep
the guests awake and the lights on. To change the message,
the manager re-assigns rooms (poor guests).

I usually teach it straight.  Analogies are a bit quaint and
may mislead.

Regards,

John

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