Introduction

In the previous lesson, you learned one of the foundations of computer science - that 8 bits equals a byte and that each ASCII character is one byte. You also learned that a byte is the chunk size for binary information used in computers. This lesson will focus on the size of files that are based on these principles.

When you want to send an attachment in an email, the size of the file is very important. Microsoft Outlook only allows a file size that is 20-25 MB as an attachment.

  • What if you needed to send a larger file?
  • How would you make that work?
  • How would you make that file transfer secure?

You will learn more about those techniques in this lesson.

Lesson Objectives

Following successful completion of this lesson, students will be able to...

  • Identify different types of compression and encryption.

Essential Questions

  • How can computation be employed to facilitate exploration and discovery when working with data?

Enduring Understandings

  • People use computer systems and analyze data to create solutions to problems and challenges in computer science.

The above objectives correspond with the Alabama Course of Study: Digital Literacy and Computer Science standard: 29.