In a simple to understand explanation, what is Runnable in Java?

What is "runnable" in Java, in layman's terms? I am an AP programming student in high school, whose assignment is to do research, or seek out from others what "runnable" is (we are just getting into OOP, and haven't touched threads yet).

A Runnable is basically a type of class (Runnable is an Interface) that can be put into a thread, describing what the thread is supposed to do.

The Runnable Interface requires of the class to implement the method run() like so:

public class MyRunnableTask implements Runnable {
     public void run() {
         // do stuff here
     }
}

And then use it like this:

Thread t = new Thread(new MyRunnableTask());
t.start();

If you did not have the Runnable interface, the Thread class, which is responsible to execute your stuff in the other thread, would not have the promise to find a run() method in your class, so you could get errors. That is why you need to implement the interface.

Advanced: Anonymous Type

Note that you do not need to define a class as usual, you can do all of that inline:

Thread t = new Thread(new Runnable() {
    public void run() {
        // stuff here
    }
});
t.start();

This is similar to the above, only you don't create another named class.

Runnable is an interface defined as so:

interface Runnable {
    public void run();
}

To make a class which uses it, just define the class as (public) class MyRunnable implements Runnable {

It can be used without even making a new Thread. It's basically your basic interface with a single method, run, that can be called.

If you make a new Thread with runnable as it's parameter, it will call the run method in a new Thread.

It should also be noted that Threads implement Runnable, and that is called when the new Thread is made (in the new thread). The default implementation just calls whatever Runnable you handed in the constructor, which is why you can just do new Thread(someRunnable) without overriding Thread's run method.