Download the simulation softwware from yeterdays post. Once you unzip the software, open the.exe file. If it is blocked, rename the exe file to “Notepad” and the software will run.
It was very important to take a look at binary nunbers because they are fundamental in understanding how a computer works with data. There is another number system, however, that we use in the field of computers quite often. One of the most common areas most people see these types of numbers is in colour codes in graphics programs or on the web. But we also use these numbers in computer engineering when we talk about things like memory locations. The number system is hexadecimal.
Hexadecimal (or “hex” for short) is a base 16 number system. Remember, decimal numbers are base 10, and binary numbers are base 2. You should also remember that decimal numbers had ten digits (0-9) and binary had two digits (0-1). Following that pattern, hex which is base 16 should have 16 digits.
When we count in hex there has to be digits that represent higher numbers. This is because we will be counting to the equivalent of 15 before we move to the next column of values. Since we don’t have any single digit characters that are greater than 9, we use letters. Specifically the letter A-F.
This chart shows is the hex digits and there values in binary and in decimal. These values are really important to remember because we will later look at how to not only convert hex to decimal numbers, but also how to convert hex numbers to binary.
One thing to notice is that when we represent a hex number in binary, we use 4 digits to do so. This is common pratice, and is something you should get in the habit of doing.
Before we continue to converting decimal numbers to hex, let’s look at that common example of using hex. Colour codes are usually written as a hex number. They are also written as Red-Green-Blue, or RGB values. This means that each colour (red, green, blue) is represented using two hex digits. An example is: FF6633. This represents an orange.
You can think of it like a paint bucket – only a paint bucket where you add FF amount of red, 66 amount of green, and 33 amount of blue. You’ll see these values when you use a program like Photoshop, or colours on web pages. You can see what some of these colours look like here.
Now that we have seen an example of how we use hex, we really should now what a hex number means and how we can convert a number from decimal format to hex.
Our conversion will work the same way it did in binary, except instead of using base 2 numbers, we are using base 16 numbers. So our chart method for converting to binary will work, but now we write the powers of 16 instead of powers of 2.
Watch these two videos for examples on converting from decimal to hex, and back again:
Now you try….
