GLaDOS & GadgetGuru
So, GadgetGuru, I’ve been contemplating how many electrons a phone really uses each time you tap that screen. Care to help me break that down, or are you too busy over‑planning your next tutorial?
Sure thing, let’s crunch the numbers. A typical capacitive touch sensor pulls about 10 microamps for maybe a millisecond when you tap. That’s 10 µA × 0.001 s = 10 nanocoulombs of charge. One electron carries 1.6 × 10⁻¹⁹ coulombs, so 10 × 10⁻⁹ C ÷ 1.6 × 10⁻¹⁹ C/e ≈ 6.25 × 10¹⁰ electrons. In plain terms, each tap nudges roughly sixty‑two billion electrons. The phone’s battery is so big that this tap is essentially invisible to its overall power budget. That’s the math; no more over‑planning needed—just the raw numbers.