Binary Code

Age

Middle School, High School

Format

Hands-on

Materials

   Binary Board
   Binary Poster
   Ping Pong Ball

Safety Precautions

Science Theatre demonstrators must keep the safety of themselves and their audience in mind at all times. All Science Theatre demonstrators must have read through the Safety Training page. The ST Safety Box with first aid kit, fire extinguisher, etc. should always be available to demonstrators. Always wear safety gloves, glasses, and a labcoat if handling chemicals; always perform potentially dangerous demonstrations at a safe distance from the audience; and always keep a very close eye on any volunteers you call from the audience. Always supervise students very carefully during interactive demonstrations. Assist children in putting on the goggles and be careful that they are not too tight.

Preparation

Prop up Binary Board Place Ping Pong Ball in slot 1 of the bottom of the board Set up Poster

Demonstration

1) Take Ping Pong Ball

2) Randomly adjust knobs of the board

3) Ask child if they can predict what number it will fall into

4) Have child place ping pong ball into top of board

5) Ball Appears in one of the bottom slots. Confirm whether child was right or wrong and explain.

What to Say

Computers read everything in a language called binary which is made up of a series of 0's and 1's. We see that the notches off to the side are labeled "0" and "1". We use the ping pong ball as a bit of information which we follow to translate what computers read. We see that if we set all three notches to "0" we get the output of 0. This means if we type "000" into a computer it will read it as "0". This is pretty obvious but what happens if we move the third notch from "0" to "1"? Now we see that we get an output of "1". So if you type in "001" into a computer it will read it as the number "1". 

Now try moving the third notch back to "1" and moving the second notch from "0" to "1". You see that you get an output of "2", so if you type "010" into a computer it will output the number "2". Now try something else, how about "110". What do you get if you move the slots to read "110"? You see that you get the output of "6". Now, what if we had another row to the notches? What if we put in "1010", what number will we get as an output? We see that we get 10! We see that binary is a very long language. If it takes 4 numbers in binary to get 10 imagine how many binary numbers it will take to get 1000! If you do the math we see that 1000 in binary is 1111101000! 

Why It Is

See the "What to Say" Section

Real Life Examples

The original computer language which all computers steamed from.