Week 8 - Keyboarding - Binary Code
GARDEN SIGN-UP
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Binary Code
Computers do math. That's all they do.
Computers use only 2 numbers to do the math:
1 and 0
That's it--only 1's and 0's
Computers use what's called 'Binary Code' or 'Base 2' digital information. I remind the kids that 'BI' means 2--just as a BIcycle has 2 wheels which makes it easy to remember why the term 'Binary' means 2 numbers (0 and 1).
A computer can calculate the 1's and 0's at a rate of millions of times per second--and getting faster all the time.
What is truely amazing is that the computer, using different combinations of 1's and 0's can produce such a wide array of effects--words, pictures, animations, sounds, etc. As complex as this may sound it is really very simple. The combinations the computer uses to recognize/reproduce the first 7 alphabets are:
A=01000001
B=01000010
C=01000011
D=01000100
E=01000101
F=01000110
G=01000111
Notice that for each letter the computer uses an 8 digit
combination of 1's and 0's. Every piece of information the computer produces is
an 8 digit combo. This is important to remember when we start talking later
about bits and bytes.
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Place Value in Base Ten (our counting sytem): 0s-10s-100s-1000s-10000-10000-1000000-etc. but in reverse.
'Place Value' in Binary: 256-128-64-32-16-8-4-2 (that's all)
See http://www.intel.com/education/transworks/index.htm
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Student Activity -- What's the number?
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Hands On:
Brain Pop Binary Activity at http://www.brainpop.com/technology/computers/binary/
Log in: spn04
Password: philip
Play game, take quiz, if time allows choose another related Brain Pop Activity
