I was woundering on how exactly grades were curved normally. When instructors apply curves what is generally done? What happens if there's one person in a course that has a perfect score and the rest have like 80% of the points given out during the course. I was just woundering what is generally done.

As you can see from these sites, an instructor can use a normal curve in several ways.

http://www.k12academics.com/education-assessment-evaluation/bell-curve-grading

http://academics.hamilton.edu/biology/smiller/curve.html