At the Bottom of things
• A piece of digital information is always stored as a sequence of binary states.
What is a “binary state”???
Electrical Memory
• RAM, Memory Sticks, Memory Cards all store information as sequences of negative or neutral charges.
• The two states are negative and Neutral
A “bit”
A bit of information is a single binary state.
For example:
• “on” or “off”
• “pit” or “land”
• “negative” or “neutral”
• “dead or “alive”
A “Kilobyte” (Kb)
A Kilobyte is 1024 bytes or 210. (or about 1000 bytes)
You would measure an Email in Kb.
A Megabyte Mb
A megabyte is 1 048 576 bytes which is 220. (Or about 1 million Bytes)
Mp3s and digital pictures are usually 2-5 Mbs.
Gigabytes (Gb)
A Gigabyte is 1 073 741 824 bytes or 230 or about 1 billion bytes.
We measure RAM, Hard drives, Memory cards in Gb.
Terabyte
• A Terabyte is 240 which is 1 099 511 627 776 bytes
Large hard drives are measured in Terabytes.