Rocket carries a laptop into the bay. "The neighbor says it crawls," he says. "Every tap takes forever." The screen shows twelve open apps and twenty web pages.
Raven counts the little icons along the bottom. "What do you notice about how much is open at once?"
Nova dims her lights to think. "Would you like a hint? A workbench has only so much room. When it is full, the worker has to shuffle things around."
Memory is fast, but it is not very big. Every open app takes a piece of it.
Every open web page takes a piece too. When memory fills up, the computer starts to shuffle.
It moves some work off the bench to make room. Then it brings that work back when you need it.
All that shuffling takes time. That is why a crowded device feels slow.
Memory lives on small chips inside the device. The chips sit close to the processor.
Each chip holds millions of tiny switches. A switch can be on or off, just like the binary you learned.
The switches need power to stay set. Cut the power and every switch goes blank.
That is why memory is called volatile. Volatile means it does not last without power.
| Statement | True or false? |
|---|---|
| Memory is bigger than storage on most devices. | ? |
| Closing an app gives memory back. | ? |
| Memory chips need power to hold their switches. | ? |
| A restart deletes your saved files. | ? |
Nice work! You know why a crowded device gets slow, and a safe fix for it. Tomorrow you will visit the shelf and find out how storage keeps files.