@@@  Measures in Technology and The Metric System   @@@

Even though  The Metric System  exists throughout the United States, it is not well accepted and not well understood in the US.
The Metric System is very much pervasive in the Medical Profession, in the Automobile Commerce and in the Food Industry.
Technology impacts all types environments throughout the World especially in the US, and it specifically uses The Metric System.
Therefore, it is especially important that Students, Teachers and Parents understand and appreciate The Metric System.

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This activity will attempt to present an overview of The Metric System in Technology
and concentrate on the aspects of speed within Technology usage.
The basic units to be explored in this activity will be:  Kilo,  Mega,  Giga,  and  Tera.

Kilo = 1x10³   Mega = 1x10⁶   Giga = 1x10⁹   Tera = 1x10¹²

In words, these terms mean:  Thousand, Million, Billion, and Trillion.  They are used most often in the US Government!
These basic units are actually prefixes that provide a quantity to a specific Technology term.
The common Technology term of  Bit which is used to describe the speed of information via communication media is sometimes confusing.
A simple and practical definition of a Bit is a digit in the Binary Number System. Example: A = 01000001 and a Bit is any 1 or 0.

Using the term Bit, there are common technology communication media to transport information.
Dial Up Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) Broadband
These three communication media are probably  the  most common in use with today 's technology.
These three communication media use common phone lines (DialUp and DSL) while Broadband use Optical Fibers.

These communication media use a common speed measure such as: Bits/Second. How many Bits travel pass a Point in a Second?

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Now, activities with Measures of Technology and The Metric System.

The most common, but becoming less used in today's technology, is the Dial Up communication media.
A Dial Up media has a maximum speed of about 56 KBits/Sec. Remember: How many Bits travel pass a Point in a Second
Therefore, a Dial Up System would pass approximately 56,000 Bits pass a Single Point in One second.  Whoa!!!
A simple web page created with Mozilla Composer,  like the one you are viewing, would be about 5 to 10 Kilobytes (KB).
Ok, now how many smallest and simplest web pages could the fastest Dial Up system transport approximately:?  __________

Let’s assume were are using an 8 Bit Binary System thus each Byte is 8 Bits. So, 5 KBytes = 40 KBits.

Use  Basic Online Calculator to determine (check) the answer to this question!   ( 56,000 / 40,000= 1.4 web pages / second ).

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Free JavaScripts provided by The JavaScript Source

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Now, activities with Measures of Technology and The Metric System.

A most recent, but becoming more used in today's technology, is the DSL. communication media.
A DSL media has a maximum speed of about 128 KBits/sec. Remember: How many Bits travel pass a Point in a Second

Therefore, a DSL System would pass approximately 128,000 Bits pass a Single Point in One second.  Whoa!!!
A simple web page created with Mozilla Composer,  like the one you are viewing, would be about 5 to 10 Kilobytes (KB).
Ok, now how many smallest and simplest web pages could the fastest DSL system transport approximately:?  __________
Let’s assume were are using an 8 Bit Binary System thus each Byte is 8 Bits. So, 5 KBytes = 40 KBits.

Use  Basic Online Calculator to determine (check) the answer to this question!   ( 128,000 / 40,000 = 3.2 web pages / second ).

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Free JavaScripts provided by The JavaScript Source

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Now, activities with Measures of Technology and The Metric System.

A most recent, but becoming more used in today's technology, is the Broadband communication media.
A Broadband System has a maximum speed of about 1.5 to 2 MBit/s. Remember: How many Bits travel pass a Point in a Second

Therefore, a Broadband System would pass approximately 2,000,000 Bits pass a Single Point in One second.  Whoa!!!
A simple web page created with Mozilla Composer,  like the one you are viewing, would be about 5 to 10 Kilobytes (KB).
Ok, now how many smallest and simplest web pages could the fastest Broadband system transport approximately:?  __________
Let’s assume were are using an 8 Bit Binary System thus each Byte is 8 Bits. So, 5 KBytes = 40 KBits.

Use  Basic Online Calculator to determine (check) the answer to this question!   ( 2,000,000 / 40,000 = 50 web pages / second ).

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Free JavaScripts provided by The JavaScript Source

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Try finding out how fast simple web pages using Digital Networks or Cellular Networks would transport in one second?

By the way, what is the difference between the words Digital Networks and Cellular Networds?

Humm… A good way to do this search Wikipedia or How Stuff Works for speeds!!! J

@@@ Bits, Bytes and Number Systems * Programming Tutorial @@@

Tom Love Malone College Spring 2006