Does a sundial work with a physical entity or information? Is it
digital or analog? Is it a computer by our definition?
Q. 7
Is a pocket calculator a computer?
Q. 8
Is a cassette tape digital or analog?
Q. 9
If a standard light switch is a binary digital device, what about a
dimmer switch? (You know, the kind with a dial that you can turn low
for a romantic dinner or very bright for surgery on the dining room table.)
Q. 10
From our discussion, you might notice that even a binary switch is
really an analog device that can give a digital value. Is there any
such thing as a TRULY digital machine in a physical sense?
Q. 11
How many possible signals could we send with 4 binary signals? What
is the highest number we could represent with these four switches? What if we have eight switches?
Q. 12
Does addition and subtraction work the same way in binary as it does
in other bases? Use the binary representations for 1(01), 2(10), and
3(11) to check.
Q. 13
Are other bases possible besides base 10 and base 2? If so, why would you
ever care?
Q. 14
Given a computer with memory locations 1 to 10, and registers A B and
C, what do you think the following "machine language" code might do?
Load value from memory 1 to register A
Load value from memory 3 to register B
Add Register A and Register B, putting response in C
Store value in register C to memory 7
