Ying and Holly Knoll a Calculator!

For our knolling assignment, Ying and I took apart a Sharp EL-233S handheld basic calculator. While it was simple enough to remove the screws from the outer shell, the part of the process that required the most negotiation was prying apart the shell by wearing away the compressed plastic parts that bonded one half of the shell through the processor chip and to the other half. After that, like a shucked oyster, the calculator revealed its squishy innards.

We had already expected that the processor chip, as the "brain" of the calculator, handles the logic of its calculations. Still, on its own it does not handle translating the physical input into binary logic, or outputting an LCD display. We were surprised to discover that the calculator contains a membrane that not just provides the tactile feedback one gets from pressing the buttons, but also contains the carbon that conducts with the back of the processor chip, thus relaying the user's input to the brain. 

The logic of the processor chip as well as the mechanics behind the LCD screen are described below in our function diagram: