The 8-bit byte is the basic unit of computer data. Play with the slider to explore the range of a byte's values. If the zeros and ones look too techie, try the fun look. Zeros and ones, donuts and milk, Morse code dots and dashes – they all convey the same message.
Your byte has the value as a number.
A byte is a sequence of eight bits.
Each bit has the value 0 or 1.
While a byte may be used in many different ways,
it is at its heart a number from \( 0 \) through \( 255 \),
as shown in the little box just above.
The values of the bits in a byte depend on their position, just the way decimal digits work in everyday numbers. Check out these sample values:
Binary Everyday Donut Value Name Encoding ------ -------- -------- 0 Zero 🍩 1 One 🥛 10 Two 🥛🍩 11 Three 🥛🥛 100 Four 🥛🍩🍩 101 Five 🥛🍩🥛 110 Six 🥛🥛🍩 111 Seven 🥛🥛🥛 1000 Eight 🥛🍩🍩🍩 1001 Nine 🥛🍩🍩🥛
In decimal, we know the ones place, tens place, hundreds place, and so on. In binary, we have the ones place, twos place, fours place, and more as shown here:
128 64 32 16 8 4 2 1
As an example,
the value of the byte 00100101
is \( 32 + 4 + 1 = 37 \).
What's amazing is how much can be accomplished with a little chunk of data that takes just \( 256 \) different values. Please read on to learn more.