LMAO, it's a good thing you're a liberal arts major and not in engineering. "Hardware emulation" is only one type of emulation, there's also "software emulation", or even "hybrid". Search Yahoo for "software emulation" why don't cha, there's only 149,000 hits you somehow never heard of.
What part of "compatibility layer" do you not understand?
Even my twelve-year-old brother knows not only how to use Wine, but how it works...
Sheesh. RTFM, troll.