Short · Numbers
How high can you count on ten fingers?
Give ten fingers the values 1, 2, 4 and onward, doubling each time. Each up-or-down pattern is one ten-bit number, from 0 through 1,023.
Try it yourself
Opens Binary Fingers. Change the same thing yourself.
Transcript
How high can you count on ten fingers? Ten? Try one thousand twenty-three. Give each finger a value. One, two, four, eight. Each finger, double the last. A finger up means count it. Down means skip it. Now start counting. Every number gets its own pattern of fingers. With all ten up, you reach one thousand twenty-three. That's binary, and it's how computers count, with tiny switches instead of fingers. Follow to see how the world works.