Bits & Bytes/ Hertz

Bit

Each 0 and 1. Smallest unit of data that a computer uses. It can be used to represent two states of information.

Hertz

is the standard unit of measurement used for measuring frequency. Since frequency is measured in cycles per second, one hertz equals one cycle per second.

Megahertz

one million hertz, especially as a measure of the frequency of radio transmissions or the clock speed of a computer.

Byte

Equal to 8 Bits. 100 Bytes would equal an average sentence.

Gigahertz

GHz is a unit of measurement for alternating current (AC) or electromagnetic (EM) wave frequencies equal to 1,000,000,000 Hz. 2. When referring to a computer processor or CPU, GHz is a clock frequency, also known as a clock rate or clock speed, representing a cycle of time.

Kilobyte

Approximately 1,000 Bytes, actually 1,024 Bytes depending on which definition is used. 1 Kilobyte would be equal to this paragraph you are reading, whereas 100 Kilobytes would equal an entire page.

Megabyte

Approximately 1,000 Kilobytes. In the early days of computing, a Megabyte was considered to be a large amount of data. These days with a 500 Gigabyte hard drive on a computer being common, a Megabyte doesn't seem like much anymore. One of those old 3-1/2 inch floppy disks can hold 1.44 Megabytes or the equivalent of a small book. 100 Megabytes might hold a couple volumes of Encyclopedias. 600 Megabytes is about the amount of data that will fit on a CD-ROM disk.

Gigabyte

Approximately 1,000 Megabytes. A very common term used these days when referring to disk space or drive storage. 1 Gigabyte of data is almost twice the amount of data that a CD-ROM can hold. But it's about one thousand times the capacity of a 3-1/2 floppy disk, could hold the contents of about 10 yards of books on a shelf. 100 Gigabytes could hold the entire library floor of academic journals.

Terabyte

Approximately one trillion bytes, or 1,000 Gigabytes. There was a time that I never thought I would see a 1 Terabyte hard drive, now one and two terabyte drives are the normal specs for many new computers. To put it in some perspective, a Terabyte could hold about 3.6 million 300 Kilobyte images or maybe about 300 hours of good quality video. A Terabyte could hold 1,000 copies of the Encyclopedia Britannica. Ten Terabytes could hold the printed collection of the Library of Congress. That's a lot of data.