Dr. Addams was a large man, but moved briskly.  His full beard was jet black, as was his long hair, pulled back into a pony tail.   He breathed through his nose, and spoke in a booming voice as he made his way to the front of the classroom.  "Good morning!  Is everyone excited to be here?"  A few muted responses of "yes" and "good morning" drifted back.  As he reached the table where Merideth was addressing the class he smiled at her, and said in a more conversational tone, "They didn't sound very excited, lets see if we can change that."  Setting his props down on the table, he turned, and again addressed the class in his commanding voice.  "What's the difference between computer hardware and software?" 

The students looked around at each other, as if trying to decide how to answer the question.  A young man from the back row spoke up, "Hardware is the machine. Software is the instructions."  Dr. Addams looked around the room as if waiting to hear the correct response.  Nicole Meekes spoke up, "Software is the language that the machine understands."  Dr. Addams continued looking.  Several students called out ideas, while several others began debating among themselves.  "Software is virtual, hardware is physical."  "Software is just data.  A machine has to interpret it."  "No, software interprets data.  The machine simply hosts the software."  The debates and discussions grew louder and louder until the students were nearly shouting over each other. 

A booming voice silenced them all.  "Whoa!" Dr. Addams smiled.  "Now you're awake."  Most of the class chuckled and smiled with him.  "There is no difference."  The class waited for him to explain.  "I can design a circuit, or write some lines of code that perform the same function."  The class pondered.  "I can build a pocket calculator out of wire and transistors, or I can program one in Visual Basic.  They will both perform identically." 

Most of the class was visibly resistant to this idea. Lewis Nicks spoke up.  "You can't program a keyboard, or a monitor.  Isn't that hardware?"

Dr. Addams retorted, "Those are peripheral devices.  I'm talking about the computer itself, way down inside that black box.  Software and hardware are interchangeable.  I can write software to emulate an old Nintendo game system on my new laptop.  I don't need to have the hardware."  A few eyebrows rose as some of the students began to catch on.  "We'll talk more about that later.  Right now, I want to show you something."

He continued speaking as he walked back over to the table where he had left the caged white rat.  "Raise your hands if you own an iPod."  More than half the class raised a hand.  "Let me show you mine." Dr. Addams held up a pair of ear buds with the wire hanging down like a magician holding up an ordinary handkerchief.  Placing them in his ears, he opened the side of the rat's cage, and pulled the white animal out and held it in one hand.  The class leaned forward to see what he was doing as he attached the headphone jack to something behind the rat's left ear.  With the wire attached, Dr. Addams slipped the rodent into his shirt pocket.  where it peered out at the students, twitching its whiskers.  The students laughed as Dr. Addams bobbed his head to the apparent music in his ears.  "Don't believe me?"  Merideth Martin walked over on cue with a pair of ordinary PC speakers and set them up on the table facing the class.  Dr. Addams gently unplugged his ear buds from the rat, and inserted the speaker connection into the small jack behind the it's ear.  The Greatful Dead vibrated out of the speakers as the rat sniffed around the tabletop.

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