Unit #8 Objectives: Measurements

The objective of unit Measurements is to learn to recognize and understand the 15 key unit vocabulary terms. This is accomplished by completing the readings and other activities.

Unit Vocabulary

Below is a list of key vocabulary terms in this unit. You can also Print out the vocabulary list.

a measure of the capacity of data that can be moved between two points in a given period of time

The website performed very poorly because it was graphically heavy and required more bandwidth than the girl had available.

a measurement or standard that serves as a point of reference by which process performance is measured

The computer magazine used a stock Dell Inspiron as a benchmark to compare all the new computer systems for the year.

the smallest unit of storage; normally referred to as a '1' or '0'

When you "flip a bit" in a database, you change from a 0 to 1 or vice versa.

8 bits

One byte of data is enough memory to hold a single ASCII character.

a common measurement of data transmission throughput

Modern Internet connection speeds are no longer measured in bps, but in Mbps.

a common measurement of computer speed dealing with decimal calculations in a given amount of time

The more FLOPS a computer can do, the faster it is.

one billion

The word giga originally comes from the Greek word for 'giant'.

an internationally used frequency unit; equals one cycle per second

A human being can hear sound waves from 20Hz to 20,000Hz.

an very raw measurement of computer processor speed

IPS is only a base measurement of computer speeed, so you will often see it expressed it as MIPS (millions of instructions per second).

one thousand

A kilobyte is about one thousand bytes.

one million; can also mean anything large

One megabyte is about one million bytes.

one millionth

Although micro means "one-millionth", many people use it to express simply "a great deal of smallness."

a prefix meaning one thousandth

One millitesla is one-thousandth of a tesla.

one billionth

The teacher said the word "nano" can also be used for anything very small, such as nanotechnology.

one trillion

There are one trillion bytes in a terabyte.