COMPUTER SCIENCE

ASCII
Breaking the Code...
 67 111 109 112 117 116 101 114 32 83 99 105 101
110 99 101 32 105 115 32 67 111 111 108

 Can anyone guess the phrase from this “code”?

What happens when....
 The letter C is pressed on the keyboard?
 Book Title: ASCII
Learning Objectives
 Understand how characters are represented in binary
and be familiar with ASCII and its limitations.

Success Criteria
 ALL— can state what ASCII is and why it’s used.
 MOST— convert some codes from ASCII into
English and answer some exam questions.
 SOME— consider ASCII’s limitations and explore
what has been done to overcome them.
 What is ASCII?
Code number 67 C

Binary 01000011

C button is pressed

Different sets of codes are available for different types of computer.

PCs use a character set called ASCII, American Standard Code
for Information Interchange.
A Character Set is the group of symbols that a computer can
represent and includes letters, digits, punctuation marks and control
characters.
Control characters are things like Esc and Enter (aka CR because it
used to be called Carriage Return).
ASCII Explained....
ASCII Table
 You can Google to find out the codes for ASCII:
Breaking the Code...
 67 111 109 112 117 116 101 114 32 83 99 105 101
110 99 101 32 105 115 32 67 111 111 108

 Can anyone guess the phrase from this “code”?

Computer Science is Cool

Task – Convert the following...
 65 83 67 73 73 32 105 115 32 97 32 99 111 100
101 32 102 111 114 32 114 101 112 114 101 115
101 110 116 105 110 103 32 69 110 103 108 105
115 104 32 99 104 97 114 97 99 116 101 114 115
32 97 115 32 110 117 109 98 101 114 115

 ASCII is a code for representing English characters

as numbers
Task – Convert the following...
 65 83 67 73 73 32 109 97 107 101 115 32 105 116
32 112 111 115 115 105 98 108 101 32 116 111 32
116 114 97 110 115 102 101 114 32 100 97 116 97
32 102 114 111 109 32 111 110 101 32 99 111 109
112 117 116 101 114 32 116 111 32 97 110 111 116
104 101 114 46

 ASCII makes it possible to transfer data from one

computer to another.
ASCII Exam Questions
 Explain how ASCII is used to represent text in a computer
system. [3]

 What is meant by the character set of a computer? [1]

 Explain the possible limitations of using the ASCII

character set for global communication. [4]
 ASCII is a 7-bit character set so can include at most 27/128
different characters. These 128 characters represent mainly
just the Latin alphabet (accept English) and so this means that
the characters of many other alphabets (accept languages)
cannot be represented.
Using ASCII
 Press ALT on your keyboard and try an ASCII number on the
keypad – what happens?

 Try numbers:
 131
 â
 130
 é
 132
 ä

 Why is this useful?

ASCII
 Create a coded phrase yourself in ASCII and see if
someone else can decode it.
 Review

 What do you think some of the problems with

ASCII code are?

 HW – find out what is Unicode?

HW
 Complete the “ASCII” questions on the VLE (it’s
Learning).