Week 4:

Overview • Objectives • Lectures • Readings • Labs • Assignments

Overview

This week we finish up Unit I: Connections. We dive deep into the world of 0s and 1s--the "secret" coding underlying all computer languages. How are computer programs, images, and sound stored? How do computers process the series of instructions in a computer program? What do operating systems do?

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Objectives

The objectives for this week are:

Explain the link between patterns, symbols, and information
Compare two different encoding materials
Determine possible PandA encodings using a physical phenomenon
Give a bit sequence code for ASCII; decode
Explain how structure tags (metadata) encode the Oxford English Dictionary
Describe how the Fetch/Execute Cycle works, listing the five steps
Explain the function of the memory control unit, ALU, input unit and output unit, and program counter
Explain why integration and photolithography are important in integrated circuits
Discuss the purpose of an operating system
Describe how large tasks are performed with simple instructions
Explain how RGB color is represented in bytes
Change an RGB color by binary addition
Explain concepts related to digitizing sound waves
Explain the differences between “bits” and “binary numbers”