One day, my kid asked me how a calculator comes up with its answers. That’s a great question, I thought. How does a calculator do math?
After thinking about it, I realized this was a great way to teach him about binary numbers. I am going to show you how to not only count in binary, but also help you understand the basis of all electronic devices by knowing this key element.
Download the student worksheet that goes with this lesson.
By asking questions, you can discover a lot of what you already know about a subject. In this case, students usually know how to count to 100 or even 1,000, but they don’t consciously know why the numbers change in the sequence that they do. In this activity, we’re going to explore how quantities are represented by numerals (digits 0 through 9), and then learn how you can change the number of numerals and count in different bases. In the instructional video, we’re learning base 2 and 10, but you can use this to represent any base to count in.