Unit 1: Base System Conversions – Assignment

Total points for Assignment: 35 points.

Assignments must be submitted as a Microsoft Word document and uploaded to the Dropbox for Unit 1.
All Assignments are due by Tuesday at 11:59 PM ET of the assigned Unit.

NOTE: Assignment problems should not be posted to the Discussion threads. Questions on the Assignment problems should be addressed to the instructor by sending an email or by attending office hours.

You must show your work on all problems. If a problem is worth 2 points and you only show the answer, then you will receive only 1 point credit. If you use a calculator or online website, give the source and tell me exactly what you provided as input. For example, if you used Excel to compute 16 * 16, tell me “I typed =16*16 into Excel and got 256. You may type your answer right into this document.

Part I. Basic Computations

1. (3 points) Convert the binary form (base 2) to decimal form (base 10): 01110111 base 2

2. (3 points) Convert from hexadecimal form (base 16) to binary form (base 2): 7A base 16

3. (3 points) Convert from hexadecimal form (base 16) to decimal form (base 10): 91 base 16

4. (3 points) Convert from decimal form (base 10) to binary form (base 2): 81 base 10

5. (3 points) Determine the ASCII binary code used to represent the following word: Music

 

Part II. Case Study

This week’s episode of “Patty Madeye Mysteries” is called “The case of the missing puppies”.

You have been asked to do research for an episode where Patty will be challenged to find a trio of stolen puppies, shown above. Their names are Moe, Buttercup, and Fluffy. The owners have been raising the puppies with the hopes of winning big prizes in this spring’s season of dog shows. Patty is asked to help find the puppies.

Clue #1:

This Postnet bar-code was found on the floor next to where the puppies were last seen.

Patty knows that Postnet (Postal Numeric Encoding Technique) is a barcoding system used by the United States Postal Service to direct mail. As each piece of mail is processed, a barcode is printed on the envelope indicating the zip-code to which the mail is addressed. The barcode is made up of full bars (representing a “1”) and halfbars (representing a “0”) in a pattern that encodes the characters of the zip-code using a binary representation.

The bar code starts with a full-bar and ends with a half-bar & full-bar, then each number in the zip-code is converted to a four-digit binary representation (e.g. 0010 = “2”), and there is a separator bar between each number in the zipcode.

Since you are an expert on binary numbers, you take away all the separators and determine that the zip code is as follows:

a. (4 points) Can you determine the zipcode from this clue? Be sure to show how you arrived at your answer.

 

Clue #2: In the show, Patty is going to find a ransom note from whomever stole the puppies.

The producers want the ransom note to say:

“If you want to see the puppies again, start saving your money.”

…. but they want the note to be coded using ASCII hexadecimal representation. The writers want to have the ransom note appear on a computer screen using either spaces or dashes as separators between the characters. For example, “Abc” would be 41 62 63. Remember that lower case and upper case letters have different character codes.

b. (4 points) Determine what the ransom note should say using ASCII character codes.
Note: You are free to use internet web-sites to convert the code, however be sure to note the name of the website you use in your answer.

Clue #3: Patty Madeye (the heroine of the show) is pretty handy with internet sniffers, and in the show, she will be able to discover the IP address of the source of the e-mail containing the ransom note:

10.14.159.100 (in decimal)

The writers want to show off Patty’s technical expertise, so they are going to include a scene where Patty converts the IP address from four 8-digit binary numbers
(e.g. 11111111.00000000.11111111.00000000) into the above number. Note that each segment of the IP address MUST be padded out to 8-digits.

c. (4 points) You need to determine what the 4 binary numbers that Patty should use to represent the four numbers in the IP address above.

 

Task #4 (8 points) In order to convince the producers of the show that knowing different numeration systems is important, you have been asked to prepare two presentation slides on specific topics.

Guidelines:

– you may create your slides using any tool you like as long as the slide is neat, readable, and type-written. You may use Microsoft Powerpoint to make your slide, however you MUST cut-and-paste it into this document. DO NOT JUST SEND ME THE POWERPOINT FILE!!

– Each slide is to be accompanied with some “talking points” that you would make if you were giving a presentation on this topic.

Slide #1: What is the difference between a number and it’s representation? Using an actual example (like 100 or 2A), show that you know the difference between these two concepts.

Talking Points:

 

 

Slide #2: In this unit we studied three different numeration systems: decimal (base 10), binary (base 2) and hexadecimal (base 16). Choose any two numeration systems and explain to your audience how to convert from one to the other, using an actual example. For instance, you might demonstrate how to convert 00101111 (base 2) to a hexadecimal representation. Feel free to use technology (e.g. Excel, Internet calculators, etc) solutions to solve this problem, but clearly describe how you are using it.