How does a printer put words on paper?
Tiny Ink Cannons
How does a printer put words on paper?
You press print, walk to the printer, and there's your homework—words and pictures sitting right on the paper like they've always been there. But thirty seconds ago, that paper was completely blank. So how did the printer put all those tiny letters exactly where they needed to go?
Most home printers are inkjet printers, which means they spray ink. Inside the printer lives a cartridge—a little plastic box filled with liquid ink. That cartridge sits on a metal bar that slides back and forth across the paper, like a typewriter carriage but much faster. The cartridge has hundreds of microscopic nozzles on its bottom, each one thinner than a human hair.
