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By the end of this video, you'll learn how we can represent the words, numbers, emojis, and more we see on our screens from only these 256 possible values. It's all thanks to character encoding. Character encoding is used to assign ou...

Remember when I said that a computer is a device that stores and processes data by performing calculations? Whether you're creating an artificial intelligence that can be humans at chess or something more simple like running a video game, the mor...

Logic Gates Knowing how logic gates work is important to understanding how a computer works. Computers work by performing binary calculations. Logic gates are electrical components that tell a computer how to perform binary calculations. They specify ru...

By the end of this video, you'll learn how we can represent the words, numbers, emojis, and more we see on our screens from only these 256 possible values. It's all thanks to character encoding. Character encoding is used to assign our binary v...

You might be wondering how are computers get these ones and zeros? It's a pretty question. Imagine we have a light bulb and a switch that turns the state of the light on or off. If we turn the light on, we can denote that state is one, if the...

Binary is the fundamental communication block of computers, but it's used to represent more than just text and images. It's used in many aspects of computing, like computer networking, what you'll learn about in a later course. It's important that you understa...

When we interact with our computers, we use our mouse, keyboard, or even a touch screen. We don't tell it the actual zeros and ones, it needs to understand something. But wait, we actually do. We just don't ever have to worry about it. We use the concept of ab...

In the last video, I mentioned that people don't need to understand how a computer works for them to use it, because abstraction makes things simpler for us. That's technically true, but since you're stepping to the world of IT, you do need to understand all t...

We have a lot of people that have nontraditional backgrounds that have made it here at Google. I've worked with people who have history degrees. I work with people who have economic degrees, and they're writing scripts, automating us on how we can process thes...

New terms and their definitions: Course 1 Week 1Abstraction: To take a relatively complex system and simplify it for our use Algorithm: A series of steps that solves specific problems ASCII: The oldest character encoding standard used is ASCII. It represents...

Isn't the history of computers supper interesting. I love going back in time and seeing how we got to this exciting point in computing. You've already taken the first few steps to building your foundational knowledge of IT. Before we dive deeper, I'll just tak...

Let's face it, computers are everywhere.  You come into contact with them at home, work, the airport, the grocery store. You're using some type of computer to take this course. You know what? There's probably one in your pocket right now. While computers are ...

Before we get our hands dirty with learning how to build a computer, let's talk theory first. In an earlier lesson, we talked about binary and how computers perform calculations. Remember that our computer can only communicate in binary using 1's and 0's. Our ...

Supplemental Reading for CPUs CPU cache and overclocking In this reading, you will learn about the various levels of cache for central processing units (CPUs) and how a CPU processes and executes instructions. Additionally, you will learn about overclockin...

Changes in diversity with regards to IT support specialist is something I noticed for the last several years. There is a lot of stereotypes in the industry. But I think what was unexpected was how many people actually break that mold? The people I've met in th...

If someone asked you, calculate the square root of 5,000,439,493 would you do the math by hand? Unless you really love tedious math problems, you'd probably use a calculator. What about binary? Well, you probably wouldn't calculate binary by hand either. There...

To learn more about the differences between 32-bit and 64-bit CPU architecture, click here for microsofts explanation and here for the wikipedia article.

0:01Let's talk about RAM, our computers short-term memory. We use RAM to store data that we want to access quickly. This data changes all the time so it isn't permanent. Almost all RAM is volatile, which means that once we power off our machines, the data stor...

The motherboard, the foundation that holds our computer together. It lets us expand our computers functionality by adding expansion cards. It routes power from the power supply, and it allows the different parts of the computer to communicate with each other. ...

Before we get into computer storage, we need to fill in some gaps. I'm referring to things like gigabytes, bits, etc. But we actually haven't talked at all about what those metrics mean. Sorry, I got a gigabit ahead of myself. As you might have guessed, these ...