What term describes the physical parts of a computer?

The term that describes the physical parts of a computer is hardware. Hardware encompasses all the tangible components that make up a computer system, including the central processing unit (CPU), memory (RAM), storage drives (like hard drives and SSDs), motherboards, and peripheral devices like keyboards and monitors. These components work together to perform the computing tasks defined by the software running on the system. In contrast, software refers to the programs and applications that instruct the hardware on what tasks to perform, firmware is a specific type of software programmed into hardware components to control them, and middleware serves as a bridge between different software applications or between an operating system and applications. Therefore, hardware is the most accurate term for the physical aspects of a computer system.