Dear dumb guy: How do microphones work? - Science project is due tomorrow

Dear science project: You know, for the longest time, I always assume they operated in an organic fashion - that is, I thought there were little dudes inside microphones that recorded what you said, and then repeated it later. But do you know what? I did some research, and that’s not true at all!

It turns out that the real workhorse inside a microphone is something called a polymer, a tiny charged particle that bounces around inside the little glass shell just below the microphone’s grill. When you speak into a microphone, the ions in your breath interact with the polymer, changing its electrical charge; that electrical charge is then transferred to the glass, which is then read by an electrostatic plate. When it comes time to play back the recorded sound, an electrical signal reads the contents of that plate.

It’s crazy complicated but it works, and that’s what really counts. Isn’t science incredible?