Digital Information

Everything that happens on a computer is the result of real-world physical signals.

Match the computer-related items with their real-world physical signals.

• Optical discs (CDs and DVDs)

• Tiny particles with a north or south magnetic charge

• Data traveling through a wire

• Positive and negative charges

• Hard drives

• Microscopic light and dark spots

When a physical signal is interpreted by the computer, it’s called digital data. Each individual signal interpreted is called...

• A bit

• A byte

• A flop

• Throughput

Eight bits together are called a/an...

• octal

• byte

• cycle

• Hertz

Each byte has _______ possible combinations of ones and zeros–from eight zeros all the way up to eight ones.

Old video games, like Super Mario Bros., were limited to 256 colors because they had ​ ​ (a)   .

• 8-bit graphics
• 32-bit graphics
• 64-bit graphics
• 16-bit graphcis

When encoding text, each character of text has a unique _____________ to represent it.

• binary code

• kilobyte

• hexadecimal number

• megabit

Integers can have a positive or negative value, so computers encode that information by using the first bit for the sign: one for​ (a)   and zero for ​ (b)   .

• positive
• negative
• neutral
• exponential

If you wanted the most storage space, which of the following should you choose?

• 1 kilobyte hard drive

• 1 megabyte hard drive

• 1 gigabyte hard drive

• 1 terabyte hard drive

Throughput is _____________ from one computer to another.

• a gighertz

• bandwidth

• data transmission

• cloud storage

Each time the processor writes data to memory or reads data from memory is called a...

• cycle

• Hertz

• byte

• bit