Discuss “How Things Work: iPods”

The digital music player has become a staple of everyday life for many college students. Apple’s iPod accounts for the majority of MP3 players sold worldwide.

To better understand the iPod, we need to explore musical recordings themselves. Live music, typically heard at concerts, is thought of as analog, which is a continuous variation of frequencies that produces a desired sound. Older stereos used analog technology.

But in the new world of electronic gadgets, the iPod is classified as a digital music player. It is called digital because the music files stored on the iPod are in digital form, meaning that the files are mathematical samples of the original analog wave.

Digital MP3 files are actually just representations of the original...