Perpendicular magnetic recording

You know how when you draw on a piece of paper with a pencil, you can draw a line going up and down or side to side? Well, it's kind of like that with how a computer stores information on a hard drive.

But instead of using a pencil, the computer uses tiny magnets to represent information. Imagine a bunch of tiny little arrows pointing either up or down. When the arrow is pointing up, it means "0" and when it is pointing down it means "1".

Well, sometimes the magnets can get really close together and it can be hard to tell which way the arrow is actually pointing. This can cause mistakes when the computer tries to read the information.

So, to fix this problem, scientists came up with a way to make the magnets stand up tall on a fancy new hard drive. They do this by making the magnets stand on their end, like a tower. This is similar to stacking blocks or Legos where you can stack them up vertically or lay them down horizontally.

This new way of storing information is called perpendicular magnetic recording because the magnets stand up straight, at a right angle or perpendicular to the hard drive, instead of laying down flat. This helps the computer to read the information more accurately and without errors.