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Chapter 14. The Magical World of Television

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Who doesn’t love to watch cartoons after school? Or movies with your family? Televisions allow us to get away from reality and imagine a new world or learn about a new person. Whether you like fast-paced, adventure movies or an animated movie filled with fun, silly characters, we can thank television for providing a large variety of entertainment. So, how does a television work? Let’s find out!

When you are watching your favorite cartoon, let’s say SpongeBob SquarePants™, you are really seeing thousands of pictures that are created one after another. When these pictures are shown quickly and in order, it looks like the picture is moving!

What Makes a Picture: The image that you see when you turn on the TV is made of small grid dots, called pixels. Read on to learn more about how pixels create TV images.

Nature videos, news reports, and your favorite actors are all recorded using a similar idea. Many pictures are taken quickly in a row in a video camera. Today, video cameras save this information digitally, meaning it is saved on computer chips. The video camera captures the light on a sensor which changes the information from the light into electronic signals that can be saved on storage device.

Electricity can do many things! Power & information!

Television networks use this stored information to send shows and movies to your TV. The network sends an electronic signal with the picture and audio information all the time. When you turn your TV on, your TV translates the electronic signal so it can be shown on your TV’s display and the audio is made by your TV’s speakers.

You will remember that today’s displays are made of small (grid) dots called pixels. Light is sent to each pixel, either through a backlight (LCDs!) or light emitting diodes (LEDs!). These tiny colors are designed to make the images and movements that our brains understand.