Ever wonder what’s inside the stuff you own? Personally, the whole notion that a computer runs purely based on electrons moving across circuitry, and that somehow the 1 or 0 of an electron charge can create complex machinations blows my mind. I don’t buy it. I think it’s tiny people.

If you’re curious too, but don’t want to go jackhammering into your electronics, TakeItApart.net is for you. It’s a site full of videos and how-tos about taking apart your various electronic devices.

Other than satisfying your curiosity without costing you a fortune, the site has some definite usefulness: you can, for instance, see how to take apart computers so that you can upgrade them or change out parts. Most videos do a great job of detailing every part of the process, as well as every piece of technology involved.

For a lot of products (computers in particular, but many mainstream devices) there are a number of tutorials. For instance, with the 17" Macbook Pro, there are videos teaching you how to remove the battery, the RAM, the trackpad, the Hard Drive, and several other component parts.

Here’s a similar one for the iPhone 3G:

 

For many devices that you might want to fix yourself, getting to the necessary piece can be the hardest part of fixing it. Though Take it Apart doesn’t necessarily show you how to put things back together, you can usually guess from their instructions.

There are videos for every electronic I could think of, at least in broad categories. There are videos for taking apart toasters, mechanical typewriters, pill cameras and just about everything else.

The downside of the site is definitely its layout. The navigation buttons are hard to find, but the search is reasonably powerful- as long as you know what you want to see taken apart, you should be okay. If you just love destruction, there might be a little more work entailed.

It’s mostly just a fun site, but can definitely be a useful one. Though they still won’t show the tiny men in my computer…