Individual Assignment 3

Dear Grandma,

            Have you ever wondered how the hard drive in your computer works? If so, you can put your wonders to rest because I am going to tell you how it works right now! In every hard drive there are stacks of spinning discs moving very fast while a recording head is reading them. This system works similarly to a record player. However, instead of reading music the recording head reads the recorded magnetic pattern of zeroes and ones. The recording head reads these numbers through the magnetic grains in the disc. (TED-Ed, 2015)

            The speed and colors of your computer are affected by the amount of bits on it.  The more bits on your computer, the more RAM (random access memory) you have. This affects the speed of your computer because the more RAM you have the more room your computer has to store stuff. It is recommended that you have about 4GB of RAM, so if you have a computer has less than that and it is not very fast, then you should probably get a computer with more RAM on it. The colors on your computer are also affected by the amount of bits on your computer. The number of colors that you can see on your screen correlates with decimal value of bits you have. To find the decimal value you can use the equation: 2^X = Y. In this equation, X is the number of bits you have, and Y is the decimal value. So let’s say that your computer has 1 bit. Then that would mean your computer only uses 2 colors, because when you enter 1 into the equation (2¹=Y) you get 2 for Y. For true color, you need 24 bits. (Computer Clan, 2013)

References

Computer Clan. (2013, January 31). Where Are Bits, and Are They Important? (32-Bit vs 64-Bit). Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptzGI9VaZmQ

TED-Ed. (2015, October 29). How do hard drives work? – Kanawat Senanan. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wteUW2sL7bc

TED-Ed. (2013, July 1). Inside your computer – Bettina Bair. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AkFi90lZmXA