GCSE Computing TheoryBinary

Computers are not as smart as you think, in fact, they only know 2 things…

0 and 1

Everything else is told to the computer by a human, this is called programming.

For a computer

0 means turn a circuit off1 means turn a circuit on

Computers have millions of tiny circuits inside.

Humans need to learn the computers language to be able to tell computers what to do.

The computers language is Binary.

Here is an example of what binary code looks like:

0101010001101000011010010111001100100000011010010111001100100000011001010110000101110011011110010000110100001010

The computer can only use 0s and 1s So for a computer numbers go like is this…

Denary (our

numbers)Binary

0 01 12 103 114 1005 1016 1107 1118 10009 1001

10 101011 101112 1100

How am I supposed to remember that?!

To make the number 5, place a 1 under the numbers that you need and a 0 under the numbers that you don’t…

128

64 32 16 8 4 2 1

Make a table like this..

128

64 32 16 8 4 2 1

0 0 0 0 0 1 0 1

Denary

numbers –

keep

doubling!

This is Binary

So 5 for us, is 00000101 for the computer

128

64 32 16 8 4 2 1

0 0 0 0 0 1 0 1

We can forget the first few 0s and our binary number 5 looks like this… 101

Now use your table to convert these numbers to binary:

3206101720424771

146255

Task

1

Answers

3206101720424771146255

111001101010100011010010101010111110001111001001011111111

Work with a friend, give them a number under 255 and see if

they can convert it into binary.

Is there any number that CAN’T be made?

Task

2

Now it’s time to convert binary to OUR digits

128

64 32 16 8 4 2 1

0 1 0 0 0 0 1 0

128

64 32 16 8 4 2 1

0 0 1 0 0 1 0 1

128

64 32 16 8 4 2 1

1 0 0 0 0 0 0 1

a)

b)

c)

Can you convert these binary numbers into denary?

a) 00011000b) 00000101c) 00010110d) 01101011e) 01111000f) 10100100g) 10100101h) 10111100i) 11010111j) 11100110k) 11111010

Task

3

You

MIGHT

need a

calculato

r!

24 000110005 00000101 22 00010110107 01101011120 01111000164 10100100 165 10100101 188 10111100 215 11010111 230 11100110250 11111010  

Answers

De-code these facts…

More than 110010% of the people in the world have never made or received a telephone call.

Gorillas sleep as much as 1110 hours per day.

You can tell the sex of a horse by its teeth. Most males have 101000, females have 100100.

On average, 1100 newborns will be given to the wrong parents daily.

A giraffe can clean its ears with its 10101 inch tongue!

A man named Charles Osborne had the hiccups for 1000101 years!

Task

4

De-code these facts…

More than 50% of the people in the world have never made or received a telephone call.

Gorillas sleep as much as fourteen hours per day.

You can tell the sex of a horse by its teeth. Most males have 40, females have 36.

On average, 12 newborns will be given to the wrong parents daily.

A giraffe can clean its ears with its 21-inch tongue!

A man named Charles Osborne had the hiccups for 69 years!

Answers

“There are 10 kinds of people in the world, those who understand binary and those

who don’t”

Explain this joke…

Task

6