Week 2: Clear on Binary

Binary code has always been a bundled mass of 0's and 1's, capable of making a cool wallpaper background or a texture layer on Photoshop. Today, i can tell you that 0 1 10 11 100 101 110 111 1000 1001 are numbers 0-9 in binary code, and they are far more significant than geekery eye candy.

Just as the number 1,234 has a 4 in the ones place (10^0), a 3 in the tens place (10^1), a 2 in the hundreds place (10^2), and a 1 in the thousands place (10^3), binary code also follows its own established powers place, using the power of 2 instead of 10. So the sequence becomes 2^0, 2^1, 2^2, 2^3 and so forth, resulting in the place values of 1, 2, 4, 8, equivalent to the familiar ones, tens, hundreds, thousands place values.

			16s	8s	4s	2s	1s
			0	0	1	1	0

The binary code above, for example, reads the number 6. This comes from the addition of the place values of 2 and 4 where the 1's have been placed.


Computers use the binary language for multiple applications, assigning numerical values to things such as pixel color, symbols, and storage capacity. For a complete look at the binary system, visit www.ludism.org/mentat/BinaryNumbersSystem

Graphic source: Flickr user LaMenta3; found here.