William Shockley, who co-invented the transistor and won a Nobel Prize for it, had a pretty colorful way of explaining how amplification works: "Imagine you take a bale of hay, tie it to the tail of a mule, and then light the hay on fire. amplifiers

Amplifiers are the small but mighty parts in hearing aids that make voices louder. They’re also the devices in radios that boost signals from far away, in stereo systems that power your speakers, and in those big black boxes you plug into electric guitars to make the sound loud enough to rock the house. So, what exactly are amplifiers? And how do they work? Let’s take a closer look!