Quest 4
Bits and Binary

By the end of this quest you will be one of the "10" types of people who understand this joke.

"There are 10 types of people in the world,

those who understand binary and those who don't."

Computers use binary- the digits 0 and 1 - to store data. A binary digit, or bit, is the smallest unit of data in computing. It is represented by a 0 or a 1. Binary numbers are made up of binary digits (bits), eg the binary number 1001.

The circuits in a computer's processor are made up of billions of transistors. A transistor is a tiny switch that is activated by the electronic signals it receives. The digits 1 and 0 used in binary reflect the on and off states of a transistor.

Computer programs are sets of instructions. Each instruction is translated into machine code simple binary codes that activate the CPU. Programmers write computer code and this is converted by a translator into binary instructions that the processor can execute.

All software, music, documents, and any other information that is processed by a computer, is also stored using binary.

Geek Speak

Bit
Byte
Binary

Screen Shot 2021-02-10 at 6.12.24 pm.png

Now that we know that the binary numbers represent ON and OFF, we can use binary sliders to calculate each binary number.

One example of this is below.

If we want to represent the number 20 in binary we need to turn on the number 16 and 4 because those numbers when added together equal 20. (16 + 4 = 20)

Screen Shot 2021-02-10 at 6.16.47 pm.png

Once we have highlighted the numbers that add up to the number we are trying to represent, we can then write that number in binary.

If ON = 1 and OFF= 0

The binary number for 20 would be

Screen Shot 2021-02-10 at 6.18.08 pm.png

Notice how you do not need to add the numbers on the left?

In binary you only need to start writing the binary number at the first 1 when reading from left to right

Another example is below.

Screen Shot 2021-02-10 at 6.24.30 pm.png

IMPORTANT

If you need some help to understand this, ask your teacher now.

Quest 4 Activity 1:

Binary Sliders

Using the Binary sliders in your DigiQuest journal, calculate the binary digit for your age.

More than numbers

So now we know how to represent numbers in binary, how can we apply this to letters?

Everything on a computer is represented as streams of binary numbers. Audio, images and characters all look like binary numbers when read by your computer.

These numbers are encoded in different data formats to give them meaning, e.g. the 8-bit pattern 1000001 could be the number 65, the character 'A', or a colour in an image.

ASCII code

ASCII abbreviated from American Standard Code for Information Interchange, is a character encoding standard for electronic communication. This means it is the main type of code that computers understand which turns binary into text.

ASCII codes represent text in computers, telecommunications equipment and other devices.

Each letter (capital or lowercase) or symbol is assigned a number.

Now that we already know how to turn numbers into binary, we can use ASCII code to then turn them into text as well.

For example the letter 'A' = 65 which in binary is 1000001.

Quest 4 Bits and Binary