Practice Hardware & Software in CS Thinking

Use these practice problems to test your method after reviewing the concept explanation and worked examples.

Quick Recap

Hardware is the physical components of a computer (processor, memory, storage, peripherals) that you can touch. Software is the set of instructions (programs) that tell hardware what to do. Together they form a complete computing system—hardware provides the capability, and software provides the purpose.

Hardware is the body, software is the mind. One is physical stuff you can touch; the other is instructions that make it useful.

Example 1

easy
Classify each as hardware or software: (a) RAM, (b) web browser, (c) keyboard, (d) operating system, (e) hard drive, (f) word processor.

Example 2

medium
Explain the relationship between hardware and software using the example of playing a video on a computer. What role does each play?

Example 3

medium
A school is buying new computers. Explain why upgrading the RAM and switching from hard drives to SSDs would improve performance. What type of component is each (hardware or software)?

Example 4

hard
Explain what firmware is and how it relates to both hardware and software. Give two examples of devices that use firmware.
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