Instructions
Light Bulb Moment?
Background
Imagine you must communicate important numerical information, but you only have an array of light bulbs (8 of them) that can be turned on or off. The combinations of 'Ons' and 'Offs' is the only way to convey your digital message.
If you only had one one light bulb, there would only be 2 numbers you could communicate. Zero (it's off) and One (it's on).
If you had 2 bulbs: you could communicate 4 different states: 00, 01, 10, or 11. (Where '0' denotes 'off' and '1' denotes 'on'.) Thinking about place value, we could make an intellectual jump and let '10' denote Two and '11' denote Three: (one '2' plus one '1.')
Note: 1 bulb allows 2 states: [0, 1]. 2 bulbs denotes 4 states: [0, 3]. Wanna guess about 3 bulbs: how many states? 8 bulbs? See a pattern?
(Things get more dicey when we want to include negative numbers as well. We've got a way to do this and if you are looking carefully at the array of bulbs, you might guess how we've done this!)
This app shows an array of 8 bulbs. When you hit 'Go,' the computer randomly generates a target value in the integer interval [-128, 127]. You must determine which bulbs to turn on and leave off to reach that target. The computer knows the optimum number of clicks needed to reach the target (and each game is timed, for added 'fun'). Notice that there are 2 buttons that can turn all the bulbs on or off with one click, just to keep things more interesting.
Can you efficiently reach the target value with optimum clicks?
The app will tabularize your results and those can be copied/pasted into Excel to visualize your progress!
Want to play again? Just click the masthead icon!
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| Game | Target | Binary | Click Count | Min Click Count | Click Score | Elapsed Time |
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