Recently you have been asking me about bits and hard drives and how they work, so I am going to explain it to you. A bit is defined by either a 0 or a 1. Bits make up a binary code, which is a code made up of multiple 0 and 1. Depending on the pattern of the 0 and 1 determines characters to write information. For example, A is 01000001. Each bit has a numerical value. To figure out this value you plug the bit into the equation 2 to the power of the bit. Therefore, 4 bits would be 2x2x2x2=16. Depending on the bit value you have determines the quality of colors and audio on your computer. For color the more bit value you have the better quality of picture you will have because it has more colors to choose from. So lets take the the 4 bits from above that totaled a bit value of 16. This bit value means that the computer can only choose 16 colors, which would not give you a high quality picture. Whereas if you have 24 bits your bit value would be 16,777,216. That means that your computer has 16,777,216 colors to choose from, which will give your picture the highest quality. This same process is used for the audio. If we take the 4 bits, that means a song can only choose from 16 sounds. Therefore, the more bits there are the more sounds there will be, which will make the songs you listen to sound much better. The same process is also used for the main memory in your computer or RAM (random access memory). The more bits you have for your RAM the faster things will load. For me personally, since I have a Mac I have a lot of bits that allow me to be more efficient with my school work by being able to have multiple programs loaded at one time. (Computer Clan, 2013)
Want more information...Bits explained in more detail
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A hard drive is a square flat box that is small enough to fit in the palm of your hand. Inside the box is a stack of spinning magnetic disks with a recording head over each disk. It is like the record player that you have in your house. However, it is much smaller and holds more data or information than the local library that you go to. On the surface of each of the magnetized disks are patterns in the grain that form groups, which are the bits that we just talked about. Each of these groups are labeled as either 0 or 1. Information is written on these disks by converting strings of either 0 or 1 into an electrical current that is fed through an electromagnet. This magnet is strong enough to change the original 0 or 1 to the opposite. These 0 and 1 become information on the disk, and to read the information stored the hard drive uses a magnetic reader to turn the information back into 0 and 1. My hard drive allows me to store all of my school and works assignments when I save them, so that I can come back later on to view the documents. (Senanan, 2015)
Want more information...Hard drive explained in more detail.
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Works Cited
Bair, B. (2013, July 1). Inside your computer-Bettina Bair [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AkFi90lZmXA
Computer Clan (2013, January 31). What Are Bits, and Are They Important? (32-Bit vs 64-Bit) [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptzGI9VaZmQ
Senanan, K. (2015, October 29).How do hard drives work?-Kanawat Senanan [Video file].
Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wteUW2sL7bc
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