Or at least “explain it like I am an 8th grader.” I am a middle school science teacher and am struggling with explaining these concepts in a simplified way that my students can understand. They have some prior knowledge about waves and how they travel. I appreciate any help you can provide!
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The word analog comes from the same root as analogy. Analog signals are generally continuous, and on a spectrum, like the information that describes waves. For sound wave information, an analog encoding might be the groove on a vinyl record.
Digital signals deal with digits. We encode data into discrete quantities which we can represent as numbers. This is why digital signals have an inherent “resolution”. For sound wave information, this resolution is the bitrate and the encoding would be a long string of binary information.
Another example would be clocks.
An analog clock has gears turning the hour, minute and second hands as time passes (the time units are an *analogy* for the physical processes taking place)
A digital clock counts up electronically. There’s no in-between states when voltages are either high or low. 1 or 0. It’s not continuous like time itself.
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