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Old 10-29-2010, 12:17 AM   #3 (permalink)
DWarrior
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Join Date: Dec 2005
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u IN 3-D

Yay, my kind of title!

Here's a little of foundations to extend your computer science knowledge:

The reason 0s and 1s are used is because, as you said, they can model "off" and "on" (0 for nothing, 1 for something), and it's a lot easier to make a two-state switch than a 3-state switch.

The most basic motivation for creating computers is to...compute stuff, and since it's also congruent with my interests, I know a bit of that. Anything more advanced, I'll leave to the computer nerds:

All numbers can be represented as binary sequences, so for whole numbers the easiest way is to make each place a power of 2, remember that 2^0 (2 to 0th power) is 1. So 0 is still 0, 1 is still 1, but now 10 is 2 (2*1 + 1*0), 110 is 6 (4*1+2*1+1*0), 1111 is 15 (8*1+4*1+2*1+1*1).

You can do all math in binary, it's just a bit strange, and nobody sane remembers a multiplication table in binary. But if you want to add 5+3, in binary it's 101+11=1000. 10-7 is 1010-111=11. Multiplying by 2 is easy as multiplying by 10 in binary: 7*2 is 111*10=1110

And you also have propositional logic, let False = 0, True = 1. A logical variable A takes on only one of two possible values, 0 (for False) or 1 (for True).

Define three operations:
Given some value A, define ~A (read "not A") as its opposite. So ~0=1, ~1=0.

Given A and B, define (A v B) (read "A or B") as 1 if at least one of them is 1. So (0 v 0)=0, but all other cases are 1.

Given A and B, define (A ^ B) (read "A and B") as 1 if both of them are 1s, otherwise 0. So (1 ^ 1)=1, everything else is 0.

If you imagine A and B as some sort of pipes with water (or wires with electricity), you can construct "logic gates" that will produce flow corresponding to the desired operation. For example, an "OR gate" with input tubes A and B is simply the merging of the two tubes. If water flows through one of them, water will flow out, otherwise nothing. A "NOT gate" with input A would need a separate stream that would flow out if nothing flows out of A or would get deflected if there's a stream at A.

Of course, it's much more convenient to manipulate electronic logic gates than pipes with water. This is usually done on a circuit board.

We now have the tools to make a very basic adding calculator. Here's one that adds two numbers up to 7:

Given two numbers, A and B, write them in binary and each up to three binary digits long (so up to 7), write A as (a3 a2 a1) and B as (b3 b2 b1), where a1 is the first digit of A, a2 is the second digit, and so on. If the numbers are less than 3 digits long, then just tack on 0s on the left (so if A=1, write 001).

A+B=C, where C can be up to four digits long, written as (c4 c3 c2 c1). Then the propositional logic formulas for addition are:

c1 = (a1 v b1) ^ ~(a1 ^ b1)

c2 = (((a1 ^ b1) v ((a2 v b2) ^ ~(a2 ^ b2))) ^ ~((a1 ^ b1) ^ ((a2 v b2) ^ ~(a2 ^ b2))))

c3 = (((((a2 ^ b2) v (a2 ^ (a1 ^ b1))) v (b2 ^ (a1 ^ b1))) v ((a3 v b3) ^ ~(a3 ^ b3))) ^ ~((((a2 ^ b2) v (a2 ^ (a1 ^ b1))) v (b2 ^ (a1 ^ b1))) ^ ((a3 v b3) ^ ~(a3 ^ b3))))

c4 = (((a3 ^ b3) v (a3 ^ (((a2 ^ b2) v (a2 ^ (a1 ^ b1))) v (b2 ^ (a1 ^ b1))))) v (b3 ^ (((a2 ^ b2) v (a2 ^ (a1 ^ b1))) v (b2 ^ (a1 ^ b1)))))

If you want to add 2+6, input for A (0, 1, 0) and for B (1, 1, 0), and if you go through the equations, you will see C comes out to be (1, 0, 0, 0), which is just 8 in binary.

If you had a circuit board and a bunch of logic gates at your disposal, and batteries/lightbulbs for input and output, you could construct this calculator. In practice, these gates are constructed on a molecular scale, so you have millions of them packed in one chip.
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Last edited by DWarrior; 10-29-2010 at 01:18 AM.
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