Binary Representation Activity

Activity, Discussion

Spring 2025

Binary Code Translations: You'll be given a series of binary code strings. Your task is to translate these binary sequences into their corresponding text characters using an ASCII table. Each binary string corresponds to a character (letter, number, punctuation, or symbol) in the ASCII character set.

Instructions:

Translate each binary code string provided below into its corresponding ASCII character.
Post the translated text characters in the discussion forum.


Binary Code Strings:
01001000 01100101 01101100 01101100 01101111
01010100 01101000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01100001 00100000 01100010 01101001 01101110 01100001 01110010 01111001 00100000 01100011 01101111 01100100 01100101
01001001 00100000 01101100 01101111 01110110 01100101 00100000 01100100 01100001 01110100 01100001 00001010 00001010


Discussion:
Share the translated text characters for each binary code string you've deciphered.
Compare your translations with your peers' translations. Are they consistent?
Reflect on the process of translating binary code and its significance in digital communication.


Reflection Questions:
How did you approach the task of translating binary code? Did you use any specific techniques or tools?
What challenges did you encounter while translating the binary code strings?
How does this activity reinforce the role of binary code in digital computing?

1. Hello
2. This is a binary code
3. I love data



I interpreted the LF characters by keying 'enter' twice, though it seems that could be mistaken and/or interchangeable with the CR character.

I took some computer math classes prior to enrolling at Penn State, so I was able to fall back on this familiar process, though I don't think I did anything in particular as a strategy, besides breaking up the bytes into manageable chunks in order to remember it while looking up its conversion. Understanding the structured order of binary and ascii values helps too.

Binary code is extremely simple, yet it can be overwhelming. That's where the computer comes into play. It efficiently translates this simple yet overwhelming language into something we can understand.

Hi Sara,

TL;DR: files are often stored in Hexadecimal (Hex) or Octal (Oct), computers compute in Binary (Bin), and we read/write/type in ASCII (Alphabetic and symbol characters) and Decimal (Dec/ numbers). Computers will translate these for us in order to efficiently input data, store files, compute programs, and display output.



Great question. I don't think you need to worry too much about binary-decimal-hexadecimal conversions at this point. If you're in an IST-related degree program, then you will likely see it covered more, maybe even later in this class.

But to answer your question, binary characters are a single byte, a string of 8 bits of 1s or 0s, as you know. ASCII characters are the characters we use to write and read: 'A' 'a' '5' '$' '?'. Decimal refers to numbers, where 0 (binary) = 0 (decimal), 1 (binary) = 1 (decimal), 10 (binary) = 2 (decimal), 11 (binary) = 3 (Decimal), so on and so forth until the decimal number 255 = binary 11111111, and then you keep adding bits to go as high a number as you wish, really.

Hexadecimal does the same thing, but instead of using just 1s and 0s like binary, it uses alphanumeric characters from 0 to 9, and A to F. Specifically, the 'Hex' in 'Hexadecimal' refers to the first six letters of the alphabet, while 'decimal' refers to the ten numerical digits of 0 to 9.

Now, Hexadecimal is similar to binary or even decimal numbers in that you start at 00 and keep adding 1 to the end, so it would look something like this: 00 (Hex) = the number 0, 01 (Hex) = 1, 02 = 2... 09 = 9, 0A (Hex) = 10, 0B = 11, 0C = 12, 0D = 13, 0E = 14, 0F = 15, and then the right digit goes back to zero, so we have 10 (Hex) = the number 16... so on and so forth. Eventually, you will have numbers like 3A, 4C, 7E, etc.

And just as we can translate binary to decimal, or binary to ASCII, we can translate Hex to binary, decimal, or ASCII as well. I believe a lot of files are stored in Hex (kind of). And you'll notice that the Hexadecimal characters only take up 2 digits, so when you have a hex string that takes up 6 digits like in the example you posted, that means it represents potentially 3 ASCII characters or binary characters. In this case, if we reference a conversion chart, we can see that Hex 4B = Bin 01001011, Hex 00 = Bin 00000000, and Hex 82 = Bin 10000010.

Long winded, I know, but I hope that helps a bit!



https://web.alfredstate.edu/faculty/weimandn/miscellaneous/ascii/ascii_index.html
[Links to an external site.]

A good conversion chart covering the ASCII characters and their Hex, Octal, Decimal, and Binary equivalents