Photo source: MedienGuerilla
It’s the time of the school year for quizzes and tests. Do you know anything about how computers store information? Let’s start with bits. A bit is a binary digit, a 0 or a 1. Eight bits (b) make up a byte (B). Then we also have kilobytes (KB), megabytes (MB), gigabytes (GB), terabytes (TB), etc.
- 1 TB = 1024 Gb
- 1 GB = 1024 MB
- 1 MB = 1024 KB
- 1 kb = 1024 bytes (B)
You may sometimes see 1024 replaced by 1000. There is a bit of controversy and discussion about the use of base 2 notation (1024 = 2^10) instead of base 10 notation (10^3). Humans generally live and work with base 10 (digits 0 – 9) but computers operate with base 2 (digits 0 and 1)
Quiz question (taken from Grade 9 curriculum): How many 512 MB flash disk USB drives can you fit in an 80 Gb hard drive?
I leave you with this final question: What is a nibble?
Free iDevice Apps (limited time only)
- To the farm – http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/to-the-farm!/id514531868?mt=8
- ABC Day – http://itunes.apple.com/app/abc-day/id526989861?mt=8
Links to Explore
- Chemistry – http://www.chemicroc.com/index.php
- Puberty for Boys – http://www.childline.org.uk/EXPLORE/MYBODY/Pages/PubertyBoys.aspx
- A History of the World (from BBC) – http://www.bbc.co.uk/ahistoryoftheworld/