BUILT FOR SCIENCE NIGHT @ MHE

BINARY BRACELETS

SPEAK LIKE A COMPUTER AND LEARN TO ENCODE YOUR NAME!

BY CHRISTIAN MORROW | WWW.CMORROW.NET

“There are 10 types of people in this world:

 Those who understand binary, and those who don’t.”

PART 0001: HOW COMPUTERS COUNT

Computers count numbers differently than people do. People count using Base 10, also called Decimals. That means we have ten different symbols – or digits – that we can use to count numbers. Every number that you can think of is made up of these ten digits.

Once you get to the number 10, you have to use two of these digits, a 1 and a 0. You may have learned about this in math class. 10 is a double-digit number, meaning that there is a digit in the tens place.

Unlike our decimal system, computers count numbers using Base 2, also called the binary system. The binary system has only two digits, 0 and 1.

This is because computers are electronics, and electronics can only be either ON or OFF, nothing else. You can think of a computer as being a big box of light switches. The light switches can be on or off. If we turn the switches on and off in a certain pattern or sequence, we can get the computer to do things. In order to program the computer, we must speak to it with ones and zeroes.

Binary code is a lot like a light switch.

PART 0010: READING BINARY NUMBERS

But how do we turn our regular decimal numbers into binary numbers that the computer can understand? How do we read the same language that computers speak? It’s not very hard at all.

Let’s imagine a grid of columns that looks like this:

This tool can help us read binary numbers from 0 to 15. For example, let’s try to write 11 in binary code. We’ll do this using 11 green dots.

Let’s arrange the green dots in the grid. (For now, don’t worry about the 4 boxes underneath. We’ll be writing something in that later.) The rule is simple: columns have to be either completely full or completely empty. Columns cannot be half-way full.

The example on the left doesn’t count, because the green dots don’t fill up that big column all the way. The example on the right has columns that are either completely empty or full.

Now that we’ve arranged our dots correctly, the last part is simple: Write a 1 underneath full columns, and write a 0 underneath empty columns, like this:

Great job! We’ve just written 11 in binary code, which is 1011. This technique will work for any number as big as 15. Here are some more examples:

You can use your fingers to write out binary code too! A finger that’s up can equal a 1, and a finger that’s down can equal a 0. This is how you would make 9 using just four of your fingers.

PART 0011: MAKING BINARY BRACELETS

Now that we know how to read and write binary code, we can use that to spell out our names on bracelets!

But how do we do that? Binary code is all numbers, but the alphabet is letters.

Here’s the really neat part: programmers actually made it really simple to “translate” letters into binary code! This is because back in the old days, when computers were new and we would actually flip switches to program a computer, you might have needed to read binary code to squash bugs and fix glitches. Here’s how we do it:

There are 26 letters in the alphabet, so all we need to do is give each letter a number! It’s really simple, A is 1, B is 2, C is 3, and so on…

We can use this to write our names on bracelets! First, pick two colors of beads. You should probably pick a light color and a dark color, because that’ll make it easier to read later. Have the dark color equal 0 and the light color equal 1. In my example, I used light purple and dark purple beads, like this:

Now, we can write our binary bracelets! Start by tying a white bead to the end of your string, this will make it easy to tell where the start of your bracelet is when you try to read it. It’l also keep your beads from spilling out. Next, use the table below to turn the letters of your name into binary code, and draw that pattern out using the beads. Remember, the darker color equals 0, and the lighter color equals 1! Tie a black bead at the end to finish your bracelet!

Here’s what my binary bracelet looks like. Can you figure out what it says? Remember, five beads is one letter.

MORE TO EXPLORE: VIDEOS ABOUT BINARY

For the younger kids:

• The Basics of Binary for Kids by Potato Pirates
• Binary Numbers for Kids by Socratica Kids

For the older kids:

• How does binary code work? by TED Ed
• Computer Science Basics: Binary by GCFLearnFree
• How to read binary code by Tom Scott

Thanks for reading! You can check out my other projects over on www.cmorrow.net!

MADE WITH LOVE BY CHRISTIAN MORROW, NY 2024