Week 7 - Keyboarding - Bit, Byte, Pixel

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Pixel, Bit, & Byte

Pixel:

A pixel is the smallest piece of information that the monitor displays. The monitor acts as
a grid of sorts that places different colors in different tiny boxes on the screen which
results in letters, numbers, and images. A way to actually see how this works would be to
go the Paint program, type a letter, then zoom in on it. You will see that the letter (like
ALL letters and numbers) that the computer produces is MADE OF 8 BOXES (called 8
“pixels”).

If we know that all of the keyboard characters (letters, numbers, etc) are made up of 8
boxes/pixels this helps us to understand bits and bytes

Bit:

A BIT is the SMALLEST piece of information that a computer can handle.
Each 0 or 1 in the BINARY CODE = 1 BIT
Each PIXEL = 1 BIT

Byte:

A BYTE is a COMBINATION of 8 BITS
A BYTE = 8 BITS

Each PIXEL = 1 BIT
Each keyboard CHARACTER = 8 PIXELS therefore
Each keyboard CHARACTER = 8 BITS

Each color and sound, like each keyboard character, has been assigned a different code
(combination of 1’s & 0’s). And of course each code is a combination of 8 bits which
means that each pure color or sound is made up of 1 BYTE.

If you know your Latin, computer language (like all languages) is easier to understand:
A Megabit is 1,000,000 bits
A KILObyte is 1,000 bytes
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