Bits
Whilst we humans speak with all kinds of pronunciations using a range of characters in our alphabet. Computers have bits.
Computers speak binary
We humans have mouths that we use to produce all kinds of pronunciations. We can have a range of characters in our alphabet.
On the other hand computers don’t have mouths, but a special switch that goes on and off. So furthermore instead of characters that build up an alphabet they have bits and each bit is either a 0 or 1.
The way of processing and communicating with bits is binary code.
From binary to human
These bits are built up in order to make information that we humans can understand. For instance binary can build decimal numbers (ie. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5).
| Binary | Decimal |
|---|---|
0 |
0 |
1 |
1 |
10 |
2 |
11 |
3 |
100 |
4 |
101 |
5 |
Binary code can also convert into characters, hence words, and colour values.
Bits and Bytes
As you can guess, once we get up to number 9 it will be 00001001, which is already 8 bits long!
A very simple word like hello will be 01101000 01100101 01101100 01101100 01101111.
Hence we need more units…
| Unit | Abbreviation | Is Built up of… |
|---|---|---|
| Byte | B | 8 bits |
| Kilobyte | KB | 1024 Bytes |
| MegaByte | MB | 1024 Kilobytes |
| GigaByte | GB | 1024 Gigabytes |
| TeraByte | TB | 1024 Terabytes |
Visualising Bits and Bytes
Get a better understanding of how much bits is contained in the information we deal with everyday.
Last modified: August 27, 2017
Mark Endley