Binary and Hexadecimal

Hexadecimal (or hex) is a base 16 system used to simplify how binary is represented. A hex digit can be any of the following 16 digits: 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B C D E F.

Each hex digit reflects a 4-bit binary sequence.

This table shows each hex digit with the equivalent values in binary and denary.

There are a number of very common needs for a computer, including the need to store and view data.

Computers use electrical signals that are on or off, so they have to see everything as a series of binary numbers. This data is represented as a sequence of 1s and 0s (on and off). All data that we want a computer to process needs to be converted into this binary format.

What is binary?

Binary is a number system that only uses two digits: 1 and 0. All information that is processed by a computer is in the form of a sequence of 1s and 0s. Therefore, all data that we want a computer to process needs to be converted into binary.

The binary system is known as a ‘base 2’ system. This is because:

• there are only two digits to select from (1 and 0)
• when using the binary system, data is converted using the power of two.

Examples Of Binary


8 4 2 U

0 1 0 1 = 5

1 1 1 1 = 15

1 0 1 1 = 11

0 0 0 1 = 1

128 64 32 16 8 4 2 U
00000111=7
10000000=128
00001101=14
11111111=255