Describe how the binary number system uses only 1s and 0s to represent numbers?

Answer 1

The system we use is the decimal system which uses number 0 to 9 to represent numbers as big as we want. If you break a large number down in to digits, each digit represents a multiple of a power of 10. So the number 354 is:

3x10^2 (300)

5x10^1 (50)

4X10^0 (4)

This same principle applies to binary where the numbers 0 and 1 are used to represent different multiple of powers of 2.

so the first number is a multiple of 2^0 (1)

the second number 2^1 (2)

the third number 2^2 (4)

the forth number 2^3 (8)

and so on.

so take 1010101 for example.

working for right to left you have

1x 2^0 =1

0x 2^1 =0

1x 2^2 =4

0x 2^3 =0

1x 2^4 =16

0x 2^5 =0

1x 2^6 =64

so 1010101 is 85 in the decimal number system

this same method using different bases can be applied to many number systems like octal where 8 is the base and the number 0 to 7 are used.