Binary Code Professional Development
What is 'binary code'?
So if we look at the Years 5 and 6 Digital Technologies Knowledge and Understanding content descriptor of ACTDIK015, examine how whole numbers are used to represent all data in digital systems, you will notice in the elaborations the word ‘binary’ keeps coming up.
So what is binary code?
All data in a computer system is made up of binary information. 'Binary' means there are only 2 possible values: 0 and 1. The computer reads these 0’s and 1’s as essentially ‘on’ or ‘off’. The computer software translates all of the 0’s and 1’s, the binary code, and the information you actually work with on a computer.
Binary code is based on a base 2 number system instead of the base 10 that we are used to working with. Behind the scene the combination of this base 2 system creates numbers and letters that you see on your screen.
So how do I work it out?
Let’s start with numbers first. Binary works in a base 2 system.
To represent the number 8, you work your way from the left side of the houses, obviously 8 fits into the 8’s house once so you put a 1 in the 8’s house, and we know from our base 10 system that you cannot leave any houses to the right blank, they have to have 0’s in them, so the binary number for 8 is 1000.
Let try with a more difficult number: 19.
19 doesn’t fil the 32’s house completely so we cannot use it, but it does fit into the 16’s house, so a 1 goes into the 16’s house.
19 minus 16 leaves us with 3 remaining. 3 Does not fill the 8’s house up completely so we have to put a 0 in that house. 3 does not fill the 4’s house up completely either, so we have to put a 0 in that house also.
3 does fill the 2’s house up though, so we can put a 1 in the 2’s house.
3 minus 2 leaves us with 1. 1 fills the 1’s house up completely, leaving us with no remainders.
This means that the binary number for 19 is 10011.
The binary number for 108 is 1101100.
Let’s check. 64+32+8+4 = 108
What about letters?
To make different numbers all you do is add up the 1's. Letters on the other hand, are a bit more complicated. When is the letter A not the letter A? Well, computers don't use the letter A. They use the eight-character binary number 01000001 to represent A. Then there is the lower case a, it’s actually 01100001 in binary.
To begin, you need to understand that each letter will consist of a combination of 8 0’s and 1’s. To signify that something is a letter, and not a number, you put the code 0100 for a capital and 0110 for lower case. Then you need to give each letter a base 10 number.
A – 1
B – 2
C – 3
D – 4 …. And so on.
Then you turn your base 10 letter into a base 2 number…
F – 7
7 = 111
That means that F is 01000111 and f is 01100111.
To make a space you put the code 0010000 and to make a period you put the code 00101110.
Let’s see if you can decipher this word.
010000110110000101110100
Remember, each letter is made up of 8 digits. So break it down like this:
01000011 / 01100001 / 01110100
Then we know that capitals start with 0100, so the first letter must be a capital. The remaining 4 digits are 0011, which means that there is 1 full 2 and 1 full 1. 2+1=3. 3 represents C. The first letter is a capital C.
The next two letters are lower case because they start with 0110.
1 - a
16+4 = 20. The 20th letter in the alphabet is T.
That means that 01000011 / 01100001 / 01110100 is equal to C / a / t.
Try this one…
01001110011001010111100001110100001000001110011011001010110001101110100011010010110111101101110
Break it down…
01001110 / 01100101 / 01111000 / 01110100 / 00100000 / 01110011 / 01100101 / 01100011 / 01110100 / 01101001 / 01101111 / 01101110
Next section!
