How does a phone work?

A phone works because tiny parts wake up. You tap the glass. It lights up and makes sounds. Your voice can go far away. A friend hears you.

A phone works when its tiny parts use power from the battery. When you tap the screen or talk, the phone changes your taps and voice into messages it can send. It is a little like passing a note, but the note travels through the air to another phone. Then that phone changes it back into words, pictures, or sounds.

When you talk into a phone, a tiny part called a microphone hears your voice. The phone changes the sound into digital data, which means tiny pieces of information. It sends that data as radio waves, invisible signals that move through the air, to a cell tower. The tower passes it along to the other phone, which turns it back into sound. Fun fact: radio waves move almost as fast as light.