Eli5 Binary and hexadecimals

Question

I’m struggling in class with understanding and calculating😭😭 It’s just not clicking for me

In: 6

Answer 1

Consider that number places are like little containers, and the containers can only hold [this many] items before getting full up. After one container is full up, we empty it and say “well, that’s one full up container,” and we mark that by putting one item in the second container. Our containers look like this now: 1|0 or (10).

In “normal” counting (that is, base ten, or decimal)
a container can hold no items, or one item, or up to nine items.
When it has nine items, it is full up, and before we can add another item, we empty the container, and mark that by putting one item in the next container, signifying there’s been one full container.

Say you have twentysix beans.
You put nine of them in the right-most container, and when you pick up the 10th bean, you put it in the second-right-most container, and you empty the rightmost container. This is the number 1|0, 10, ten.

You fill the rightmost container with another nine beans, and when you pick up the 10th bean, you put it in the second-rightmost container, which now has two beans, and you empty the rightmost container. This is the number twenty. 2|0 (20)

You add six beans to the rightmost container.
You now have the number twentysix. 2|6 (26)

**Binary** is just like decimal, but the container gets full up with just one bean. When you go to add the second bean, there’s no room in the rightmost container, so you empty it and mark in the secondrightmost container that you’ve had one full up container. Two beans, written in binary, is 1|0 (10). That looks like ten, but it takes a while to get used to, and yeah, it is a little weird.

Add one more bean to total three beans, and you have the binary number 1|1 (11). Two containers that are full up.

Add a fourth bean. You go to add it to the rightmost container, but that too is full up, so you empty that container and go to the secondrightmost container to mark another full up container, but the secondrightmost is full up as well, so you empty it and go to the *next* container. You now have the number 1|0|0 (100), which is four.