Working in hex or binary can feel strange and confusing compared with the base 10 number system used in our everyday world. It's not rocket science, but it requires adjusting how one thinks about ...

If you had eight switches, for example, you could write any number in binary between 0 and 255. 0 would look like 00000000, and 255 would look like 11111111.

In the computer, all data are represented as binary digits (bits), and eight binary digits make up one byte. For example, the upper case letter A is 0101001. Numbers however can take several forms ...

Unlike our everyday counting system that uses tens, binary uses just two numbers, 0 and 1. Learn more with BBC Bitesize. Suitable for KS3 students.

Math with binary numbers isn't hard either. Take for example decimal addition of 183 plus 19. First we add 3 + 9, that's 12, so we put 2 as the sum and carry 1 to the ten's column.

01001000 01100101 01101100 01101100 01101111 00100001. Those ones and zeros might not look like anything to you, but in binary code the numbers are actually saying “Hello!”. Any code that uses just ...