COMPUTER TECH with Mr. Mills
Embedded Files
Data
Data
Learning Goals
By the end of this unit you will be able to:
- describe how computers represent information using bits
- convert between binary and decimal number systems
- use hexadecimal numbers in computing applications such as character encoding and to create digital images using pixels
- calculate and approximate file sizes for common data types
Chapter 1
Chapter 1
What's a Computer?
What's a Computer?
1.1 📺 How Computers Work
1.2 📺 What Makes a Computer a Computer?
1.3 📺 Binary and Data
1.4 📖 Write this definition in your notebook
Computer
A device that manipulates data. It has the ability to store, retrieve, process and output data. Smartphones, laptops, tablets, smartwatches, and TVs are all examples of computers.
1.5 📝 Complete these questions in your notebook! Be ready to show it tomorrow!
Use information from the videos you just watched to answer these 3 questions.
What four things do all computers have in common?
What language do computers speak?
How does a computer create pictures/images using this language?
Chapter 2
Chapter 2
Binary 101
Binary 101
2.5 🎮 2048 (Game) - Get a score of at least 1024!
2.6 📖 Write these definitions in your notebook
Bit
The smallest unit of data a computer can handle. There are two possibilities, either 1 (on) or 0 (off). The number of possibilities provided by n-bits is calculated by 2ⁿ (where "n" is the number of bits).
2.7 📝 Complete these questions in your notebook!
Evaluate these statements:
a. 2¹ = ? = ?
b. 2² = ? = ? x ?
c. 2³ = ? = ? x ? x ?
d. 2⁴ = ? = ? x ? x ? x ?
e. 2⁵ = ? = ? x ? x ? x ? x ?
f. 2⁶ = ? = ? x ? x ? x ? x ? x ?
a. 2⁷ = ? = ? x ? x ? x ? x ? x ? x ?
a. 2⁸ = ? = ? x ? x ? x ? x ? x ? x ? x ?
2.8 📝 Complete these questions in your notebook!
What is the minimum number of bits you would need to represent all of the possibilities for each of the following:
a. A light switch
b. Any 3 digit number (up to 999)
c. A letter grade (A to F) you could get on a test
d. Any student's two letter initials (e.g. K.M.)
e. Any 8 digit high score on a video game
f. The time on a 24-hour clock (hh:mm)
Chapter 3
Chapter 3
Counting in Base 2
Counting in Base 2
3.3 📖 Write these definition in your notebook
Base 2
The binary counting system, uses only two symbols (0, 1)
Base 10
The decimal counting system, uses ten symbols (0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9)
Chapter 4
Chapter 4
Converting Base 2
Converting Base 2
4.5 📝 Complete this question in your notebook!
Describe, in full sentences, how you would help a friend convert any 8-bit binary number to it's decimal equivalent. You can use diagrams and example problems to explain.
4.6 🎮 Binary Game (CISCO) - Get a score of at least 10,000
4.7 ⭐ Extension Task
Computers can also work with negative numbers, but binary has no negative sign to work with. All they have to represent numbers are 0’s and 1’s. How do you think computers represents negative numbers using only 0s and 1s? Describe your own methodology and provide 3 example of positive and negative numbers. Do not Google this question, you are inventing a strategy yourself!
Computers can work with decimals as well (that is, they can do arithmetic with numbers like 5.6 or 3.12, not just whole numbers/integers). How do you think they represent decimal numbers if all they have is 0’s and 1’s? Describe your own methodology and provide 3 examples of what it could look like. Do not Google this question, you are inventing a strategy yourself!
Chapter 5
Chapter 5
Character Encoding
Character Encoding
5.5 📖 Write these definitions in your notebook
Encoding Table
An agreed upon way to “assign” characters (letters, numbers, symbols, etc.) to binary numbers so more things can be said with binary
ASCII
American Standard Code for Information Interchange - an old 7-bit encoding table that was used to letters in the English alphabet, numbers 0-9, and some simple punctuation. It lives on today as the first 128 characters in UTF.
UTF
Unicode Transformation Format - The modern solution that uses a minimum of 8 bits (and sometimes up to 32 bits) to encode almost all characters that humans use to communicate!
5.6 📝 Complete these questions in your notebook!
Write your full name using the ASCII/UTF binary encoding table. Seperate each 8-bit number with a space. Underline each set of 8-bits and write the ASCII/UTF character underneath.
5.8 ⭐ Extension Task
Explain the problem that ASCII poses for international computer users who may speak a different language other than English. What does Unicode/UTF do to address this problem? Do you think this is a good fix?
Because of technical limitations of computer systems at the time it was invented, ASCII has just 128 code points, of which only 95 are printable characters, which severely limited its scope. Modern computer systems have evolved to use Unicode, which has millions of code points, but the first 128 of these are the same as the ASCII set. Read more.
Try this! Look for a non-important .mp3 or .png file on your computer. Rename it by pressing F2 on your computer. Change the file extension to .txt (you may need to have "Hide file extensions for known file types" disabled in your Windows Explorer settings). Open the file in Notepad. What you're seeing is the ASCII interpretation of the binary audio or image data from the original file type. Remember to change the file extension back to the original type so you don't lose your data!
Chapter 6
Chapter 6
Hexadecimal
Hexadecimal
6.5 📖 Write these definitions in your notebook
Base 16
The hexadecimal counting system, uses sixteen unique characters (0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, A, B, C, D, E, F)
6.6 📰 Why is sixteen so sweet? (NASA)
6.7 🎮 Flappy Bit, Game - Get a score of at least 10₁₆
6.9 📝 Complete these questions in your notebook!
Using your answer form Lesson 5 Question #1, write your full name as an ASCII-encoded string in Base 2 and Base 16.
Why is Base 16 used by programmers and computer scientists?
What advantages does Base 16 have over other counting systems?
6.10⭐ Extension Task
What do you think a Base 4 counting system would look like? What about Base 8? How about Base 64? What would the first 50 decimal numbers look like in each system?
Video tutorials to help you if you're stuck!
Checkpoint Quiz
Checkpoint Quiz
Number Systems
Number Systems
Be prepared to demonstrate the following concepts:
Convert between binary and decimal
Convert between binary and hexadecimal
Convert between decimal and hexadecimal
Here are some practice resources in addition to the lesson material above:
Chapter 7
Chapter 7
RGB
RGB
7.1 🔗 Create a pixel art creation in each of the bit modes and write down the binary representations for each of your creations (e.g. for 1 bit mode: 1001000010011111)
7.6 📖 Write these definitions in your notebook
RGB
Red, green, blue - the primary colours of Additive Colour Theory, can be combined with different intensities to make all colours of the rainbow
Pixel
The smallest unit of a digital image, can be made out of different materials such as liquid crystal (LCD) or light-emitting diodes (LED)
Sub-Pixel
The segments within a single pixel, generally made up of individually controlled red, green and blue LEDs that can be dimmed independently
7.7 📝 Complete these questions in your notebook!
Match the following hex codes to their colour names:
Hex Codes
#C40000, #000000, #00FFFF, #00FF00, #750075, #AAAAAA, #FFFF00, #333333, #9999FF, #FFFFFF
Colour Names
White, Light Grey, Dark Grey, Black, Green, Dark Red, Light Blue, Yellow, Cyan, Purple
7.10 🎮 Huedle
7.11 🎮 What the Hex?
Chapter 8
Chapter 8
File Sizes
File Sizes
8.1 📖 Write these definitions in your notebook
Byte
A unit of data consisting of 8 bits. This number of bits has a special name because it is a power of 2, and 256 possibilities cover a lot of use cases in computing.
kilobyte (kB)
1,000* bytes or 8,000 bits - about a paragraph of ASCII/UTF text or a small 64px x 64px icon
Megabyte (MB)
1,000* kilobytes or 1,000,000 bytes - about the average movie script typed in ASCII/UTF or the average image post on instagram
Gigabyte (GB)
1,000* megabytes or 1,000,000,000 bytes - about the size of 14 songs from a CD album or the average 24 minute TV show streamed from the internet
Terabyte (TB)
1,000* gigabytes or 1,000,000,000,000 bytes - about the size of a standard desktop PC hard drive or all of the episodes in a TV show with several seasons
* These quantities can sometimes refer to 1,024 instead of 1,000 of their respective measurement (i.e. 1 megabyte sometimes equals 1,024 kilobytes) because 1,024 is a power of 2 and works much better in binary applications. Some computer scientists use a different set of prefixes (kibibyte, mebibyte, gibibyte, tebibyte, etc.) to refer to base 2 values. and the standard prefixes used in the dictionary definitions above for base 10. Since 1,000 and 1,024 are close in value, the amounts are generally interchangeable, but large discrepancies start to develop at larger file sizes. For example, there's only a 2% difference between a kilobyte and a kibibyte, but there is nearly an 11% difference between a petabyte (1,000 terabytes) and a pebibyte.
8.4 📝 Complete these questions in your notebook!
Your phone has 2.5GB of storage left. You download a game that is 1.2GB. How much storage is available after the download?
A USB flash drive has a capacity of 3.9GB. If you copy a 400MB file to it, how much free space remains?
You take 250 photos, each 6MB in size. How much storage is would these photos take up?
A backup system has 4.4TB of total storage. If you add 700GB of files, how much storage remains in TB?
Your internet speed allows you to download 12MB per second (12MB/s). How long would it take to download an episode of a TV show that takes up 173MB?
Unit Assignment
Unit Assignment
Secret Message
Secret Message
Talk just like a computer!
Talk just like a computer!
In this assignment, you'll send a classmate a short text message accompanied by a simple picture. The catch is that you will be sending this message in binary, requiring you to "encode" your text and image data into 1s and 0s. You'll receive a binary sequence from another classmate for you to "decode" from binary back into ASCII/UTF text and 24-bit RGB image data. The whole process requires knowledge and understanding of the counting systems we've learned so far (Base 2 and Base 16, as well as your existing knowledge of Base 10), the encoding tables for text, and the sub-pixel channels for RGB colour.
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