Friday, March 26, 2010

Bits, Bytes, and Logic; Oh My!

What we've studied the last week probably hasn't really made a lot of sense to you. I know the first couple of times I ran into it, it didn't make sense to me either. But, when we start doing the logic tables next week it will start making more sense. There are a couple of things you should remember.
  1. Computers can only think in binary (0 or 1)
  2. Computer think using a transistor. The transistor has three legs; The input leg where the electronic signal comes in, the 0 output leg for any signal that is below a certain level (which is determined by what materials the transistor is made of), and the 1 leg which is for any signal that is above a certain level.
  3. By putting bunches and bunches of these transistors together in certain patterns you "create" the thinking ability of a computer.
  4. Whether a transistor uses the 0 or 1 leg is called a bit.
  5. A group of 8 bits together make a byte. This is three layers of transitors (2 the third power)

The first personal desktop computer used chips with 1024 bytes of storage which was called 1 kilobyte (they rounded down). I could go out and buy a computer that uses 3 terrabytes of storage (3,000,000,000,000) today.

How hard has it been to understand the lessons this week?

10 comments:

DDL said...

Its like really hard but we get through its not like were gonna die.

kjh said...

it has been verry hard in this class latly! and i wish you would ease up on the work.(not that you will)

Md said...

Oh my goodness I "Really" didnt understand this, whenhe explaned it to me I still didnt get it. I still dont ha

cc said...

this is hard or was=D

ws said...

it is ver hard to me and im sure you will make it sound more easyer to us when we do more stuff and

fr said...

win i ran into the three leg in dog i ran so fast i trip

aa said...

its hard and boaring konfusing and .....thats all

ig said...

yea !!!
when we start it was hard to me then that i started to do this things im learned more i like when you explain the work that we are doing and how we do it

lv said...

we stared it i thought it was hard work then i got use to it . it then it got easier i loved this expirament

AVD said...

this was hard,I agree with cc.