First of all excuse me if you think its a noob question, but consider me a noob as I am trying to understand.
I've got a couple of questions about mining, (which I think fits in bitcoin section rather than the mining section)
First: Why do bitcoin needs mining?
Second: What do they actually mine?
The quick rundown for this is that in order to confirm a block (which contains transactions, which is why you get x confirmations for transactions you make), they need to find a specific alpha-numeric code which is "mined". Once this is found, they then confirm that block and rotate the next one in, confirming more transactions as they go along.
As a reward, the pool to find the block is rewarded with Bitcoins to distribute.