Computers Scavenger Hunt

1.What does DVD stand for?
It stand for Digital versatile disc

How many DVD formats are there

DVD Video

For viewing movies and other visual entertainment. The total capacity is 17 Gbytes if two layers on both sides of the disk are utilized.

DVD-ROM

Its basic technology is the same as DVD Video, but it also includes computer-friendly file formats. It is used to store data. This product should supplant conventional CD-ROMs in the near future.

DVD-R

Its capacity is 4.7 Gbytes. Originally designed for professional authoring, a version for general consumer use is now under development. As with CD-R, users can write only once to this disk.

DVD-RAM

This makes DVD a virtual hard disk, with a random read-write access. Originally a 2.6-Gbyte drive, its capacity has increased to 4.7-Gbyte-per-side. It can be re-written more than 100,000 times.

DVD-RW

Similar to DVD-RAM except that its technology features a sequential read-write access more like a phonograph than a hard disk. Its read-write capacity is 4.7 Gbytes per side. It can be re-written up to about 1,000 times.

DVD Audio

The latest audio format more than doubles the fidelity of a standard CD. It is expected to become the most popular audio disk.

2. What is a dingbat?

Special characters like stars, hands, arrows, and geometric shapes you can use to decorate a document. A collection of dingbats is found in a popular font called Wingdings.

3.What is a handshake?

Two modems perform a handshake each time they meet, just as two people shake hands to greet each other. If the modem speaker is on, you can actually hear the handshake — it’s that annoying series of squeals and signals. The handshake helps the modems determine how they will exchange information

4.What is a home page?

An introductory screen on the World Wide Web, used to welcome visitors. A home page can include special underlined text or graphics you click on to jump to related information on other pages on the Web. Many individuals, businesses, and organizations now have home pages on the World Wide Web. See also WORLD WIDE WEB.

5. What handles can you not hold in your hand?

Little squares at the edges and corners of a selected graphic on your screen. You can move a handle with your mouse pointer to resize or reshape the graphic.

6. What was ENIAC?

ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator Analyzer and Computer), the gigantic machine credited with starting the modern computer age.ENIAC, with its 17,468 vacuum tubes, 70,000 resistors, 10,000 capacitors, 1,500 relays, and 6,000 manual switches, was a monument of engineering -- and an energy hog. The city of Philadelphia reportedly experienced brown-outs when ENIAC drew power at its home at the Moore School of Electrical Engingeering at the University of Pennsylvania.

7. What contribution did Ada Byron make to computing?

Ada Byron, Lady Lovelace, was one of the most picturesque characters in computer history. Babbage's ideas for a new calculating engine, the Analytical Engine. He conjectured: what if a calculating engine could not only foresee but could act on that foresight. Ada was touched by the "universality of his ideas". Hardly anyone else was.

8.What kind of wafers are used at Intel to make computer chips?

Computer chip technology is in all sorts of everyday items, from space shuttles to coffee makers, traffic lights, and computers. A basic rule of thumb is, if a device uses electricity and you can "tell it what to do" by programming it or customizing it, there's a chip inside.

Chips perform various tasks by design, meaning that some are more complex than others. The most sophisticated chip is a microprocessor, whose transistors can execute hundreds of millions of instructions per second.

9. What do they call the suit that cleanroom technicians must wear while making computer chips?

10.What does modem stand for anyway?

(mō´dem) (n.) Short for modulator-demodulator. A modem is a device or program that enables a computer to transmit data over, for example, telephone or cable lines. Computer information is stored digitally, whereas information transmitted over telephone lines is transmitted in the form of analog waves. A modem converts between these two forms.

11. I think the person who coined these computer terms must have been hungry.What is a bit?

A bit (short for binary digit) is the smallest unit of data in a computer. A bit has a single binary value, either 0 or 1. Although computers usually provide instructions that can test and manipulate bits, they generally are designed to store data and execute instructions in bit multiples called bytes. In most computer systems, there are eight bits in a byte. The value of a bit is usually stored as either above or below a designated level of electrical charge in a single capacitor within a memory device.
Half a byte (four bits) is called a nibble. In some systems, the term octet is used for an eight-bit unit instead of byte. In many systems, four eight-bit bytes or octets form a 32-bit word. In such systems, instruction lengths are sometimes expressed as full-word (32 bits in length) or half-word (16 bits in length).

12. The ARPANET 's development began in 1966. It was an experiment to connect universities so they could share information. What do we call this today?

February 10th
United Stated Public Law 104-106 directs ARPA to change its name to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

13. In what year was the first World-Wide Web software created by Tim Berners-Lee?

World-Wide Web (WWW) released by CERN; Tim Berners-Lee developer (:pb1:). First Web server is nxoc01.cern.ch, launched in Nov 1990 and later renamed info.cern.ch.

14. Project Gutenberg puts on the Internet public domain literature and information.What was the first document posted?

A friendly dissuasion from this yielded the first posting of a document in electronic text, and Project Gutenberg was born as Michael stated that he had "earned" the $100,000,000 because a copy of the Declaration of Independence would eventually be an electronic fixture in the computer libraries of 100,000,000 of the computer users of the future.

15. When were floppy disks introduced ?

In 1956 IBM invented the first computer disk storage system, the 305 RAMAC (Random Access Method of Accounting and Control). This system could store five MBytes. It had fifty, 24-inch diameter disks!

16. How many megabytes of data can a factory made audio CD hold?

When you copy data to a CD, you must take care that the your data does not exceed the capacity of the CD you are recording to. Due to the audio origin of CDs, the amount of information a CD can hold is measured in minutes:seconds:sectors. Each second contains 75 sectors, each of which can hold 2048 bytes (2 kilobytes) of Mode 1 user data. Recordable CDs come in 21- (80 mm diameter), 63-, and 74-minute sizes (both 120 mm diameter), which can contain:
21 min x (60 sec) x (75 sectors) x (2 kbytes) = 189,000 kilobytes
= 184 megabytes

63 min x (60 sec) x (75 sectors) x (2 kbytes) = 567,000 kilobytes
= 553 megabytes

74 min x (60 sec) x (75 sectors) x (2 kbytes) = 660,000 kilobytes
= 650 megabytes

Factory-recorded CDs can hold up to 74 minutes of data.

17. Douglas Engelbart was a computer visionary of the 1960's. What did he invent that you find handy?

In 1962 he published his seminal work, "Augmenting Human Intellect: A Conceptual Framework," under contract prepared for the Director of Information Sciences of the U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research.

18. What do the letters CD-ROM stand for?

Compact Disc-Read Only Memory. A standard for compact disc to be used as digital memory media for personal computers. The specifications for CD-ROM were first defined in the Yellow Book.

19. Name three computer peripherals

Any external device that plugs into your computer, such as a printer, modem, scanner, or tape drive.

20.What does GUI (pronounced "goo-ey") mean?

A GUI (usually pronounced GOO-ee) is a graphical (rather than purely textual) user interface to a computer. As you read this, you are looking at the GUI or graphical user interface of your particular Web browser.

21. What is an advantage of the Dvorak keyboard?

The Dvorak keyboard layout is a control panel option on almost every current computer. It is a vastly more comfortable and efficient alternative to the standard "QWERTY" pattern, which was designed in the 1800s with no effective attempt at typing comfort

22. What is a computer virus?

A computer virus is a program designed to spread itself by first infecting
executable files or the system areas of hard and floppy disks and then
making copies of itself. Viruses usually operate without the knowledge or
desire of the computer user.

23. How did Marcian Hoff's invention change computers? Look him up.

A seemingly simple idea sometimes can become an incredibly successful, mass-market product that makes life a little bit easier for millions. Such is the case with Rubber Bandits®, oversized rubber bands equipped with tear-resistant, waterproof labels, created by self-described “idea czar” Adrian Chernoff in 2004.

Chernoff was born in 1971 and grew up in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He earned a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering in 1996, followed by an M.S. in Manufacturing Engineering, as well as an M.B.A., in 1999, all from the University of New Mexico. He began a career in product development, first working for NASA as a mechanical engineer, with one-year stints at Walt Disney Imagineering, Sandia National Laboratories, and Los Alamos National Labs before landing at General Motors Corp. in 2000, where he spent five and a half years working as Chief Vehicle Architect. At GM, Chernoff developed a variety of innovative vehicle designs, including several powered by alternative forms of energy.

24. Apple Computer's G4 is a supercomputer because its operations can be measured in gigaflops. What is a gigaflop?

A measure of computing speed equal to one billion floating-point operations per second.

25.What mammal, other than humans, uses a computer?

Real Mammals Prefer Mac
By using Mac OS X and Macromedia Director on a Power Mac with Velocity Engine, the Delphis team has created a neural network system that combines real-time sound recognition with the interactive touch-screen interface.