Interesting tid-bits
Did You Know?
- a BIT is the smallest unit of data - it is either on (1) or off (0), never anywhere in between
- "bit" is short for Binary digIT
- 8 bits make one BYTE
- "byte" is short for BinarY TErm
- The bits in a byte are numbered right-to-left, starting with 0
- The number of each bit corresponds to the power of two it represents:
- 20=1
- 21=2
- 22=4
- 23=8
- 24=16
- 25=32
- 26=64
- 27=128
- To calculate the value represented by a byte, add the powers of two for all the ones: 0010 0101 = 32 + 4 + 1 = 37
- When two bytes are grouped together the first byte represents higher powers of 2 (28 through 215)
- The first byte in a pair is called the high byte or most signifibant byte. The second is called the low byte or least significant byte
- There is also a word to refer to a group of four bits: NYBBLE (really!)
- You can even refer to the most significant nybble (bits 4-7) or least significant nybble (bits 0-3)
- Nybble isn't short for anything, it's just a play on words! (half a byte is a nybble!)
- A single hexadecimal digit (0-F) represents one nybble:
- 0000 = 0
- 0001 = 1
- 0010 = 2
- 0011 = 3
- 0100 = 4
- 0101 = 5
- 0110 = 6
- 0111 = 7
- 1000 = 8
- 1001 = 9
- 1010 = A (10)
- 1011 = B (11)
- 1100 = C (12)
- 1101 = D (13)
- 1110 = E (14)
- 1111 = F (15)


