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Exercise · Q25

Q.Explain the decimal and the binary number systems, and state why the binary system is used to represent information in digital electronic circuits.

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The decimal system, used in ordinary arithmetic, has ten distinct digit symbols (00 through 99) and place values that are successive powers of ten. The binary system has only two digit symbols (bits), 00 and 11, with place values that are successive powers of two. A digital circuit's basic building block, a transistor switch (Section 9.23), settles naturally into only two stable states (cut-off/OFF and saturation/ON), corresponding to two clean, well-separated voltage levels. Representing numbers using a system that likewise has only two symbols maps directly onto this physical reality: each bit corresponds to the ON/OFF state of one switch. Representing all ten decimal digits electronically would instead require t …

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