This week, we learnt about computer and binary system. We watched the video “Inside your computer”, did a role play of simulating CPU, and did some activities in Binary Representation topic.

First, in the video, we shrank and got into the internal world of our computer. We saw the busy working CPU— there are billions of “tons” of data for this busy bee to handle and to deal with, which is pretty fascinating and astonishing for me, because the size of CPU is just as big as a cookie. With this little delicate mechanic component of the computer which has the ability to process every single algorithm, input and output, the modern technology is clearly displayed demonstrated.

We also learnt the role play of simulating CPU (central processing unit).

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We were divided into groups and every group has 5 people in it, who were responsible to do the job of CU (control unit), display, memory, logic and clock. CU is supposed to send commands to memory and display in order to get information from memory, calculate it, and send it by logic unit to display to show the result. The clock component seems just serve as a timer, but after searching on the internet, I found out that the clock could refresh the outdated information in the memory, which could help the reflection become accurate and keep up with the time. CPU is the core and the control unit of the computer; without it, the whole computer would be paralyzed and will has total disfunction.

In this activity, I served the function of memory. I told people who send the command and watched them run back and forth. It costed us about 15 minutes to finish one page of display, our clock said; but the whole process is just a very little tip of the iceberg for a real CPU, and the time used is much more shorter than a cooperation performed by 5 people. This maybe the reason that the true function of clock was not shown: we did not have the chance to refresh and finish thousands of project. This activity really show us the capability of CPU– it can process incredible amount of statistics and information within a hiccup. Just now, the CPU of my computer is processing and commanding the display to change the color of pixels of the screen to show the image of words and images instantaneously and simultaneously with every single tap on my keyboard.

In addition, we learnt more about the binary system. This is the special representation of information for computer which can simplifies the form of information and numbers into 0 and 1 and make the progress of processing much easier to code. We wrote a worksheet of the binary numbers from 1 to 60, and it’s kind of fun to see how two simple number represent different digit in different position and how these numbers “bubbling up”.

These are the topics we learnt in the recent class. I was satisfied with the new knowledge I got with the activities and videos.