Daily Practice · GCSE Computer Science

December 1953 5-a-day

Every sheet in December 1953

The same date always regenerates the same five questions, so a sheet you print today is the sheet a classmate prints tomorrow.

  1. 1st December 1953Convert the 8-bit binary number 01011010 to denary.
  2. 2nd December 1953Calculate the number of cables needed to connect 8 computers in a full mesh topology, where every computer connects directly to every other computer.
  3. 3rd December 1953Give one advantage and one disadvantage of using a compiler.
  4. 4th December 1953Convert the hexadecimal number 1A to denary.
  5. 5th December 1953Convert the denary number 156 to an 8 bit binary number.
  6. 6th December 1953Which type of malware can replicate itself and spread across a network without attaching to another program or needing a user to run it?
  7. 7th December 1953Write a loop in pseudocode that outputs every element of a 1D array named names of length 6.
  8. 8th December 1953An image uses a colour depth of 2 bits per pixel. Calculate the maximum number of different colours it can represent.
  9. 9th December 1953A CPU's cache has a hit rate of 80%. During a task the CPU makes 4000 requests for data. Calculate the number of cache hits and cache misses.
  10. 10th December 1953Describe two negative consequences of throwing away old computer hardware instead of recycling it.
  11. 11th December 1953Write a function called isEven that takes one integer parameter, num, and returns True if num is even and False otherwise.
  12. 12th December 1953Write the pseudocode header and body for a function called isAdult that takes one integer parameter called age and returns True if age is 18 or over.
  13. 13th December 1953A company backs up its files onto magnetic tape cartridges, each with a capacity of 3 TB. The company needs to back up 20 TB of data. Calculate the minimum number of cartridges needed.
  14. 14th December 1953A user reads the same email on a phone and a tablet, and deleting it on one deletes it on the other. Which protocol is in use and why?
  15. 15th December 1953Explain why iterative testing, carried out throughout development, tends to make errors cheaper to fix than relying only on final testing.
  16. 16th December 1953State what a foreign key is used for.
  17. 17th December 1953Define the term 'interrupt' as used to describe a signal received by a CPU.
  18. 18th December 1953An array called items contains [12, 45, 7, 30, 19] at indices 0 to 4. Describe how a linear search would locate the value 30, stating the number of comparisons needed.
  19. 19th December 1953Evaluate X = NOT A AND B when A = 0 and B = 1.
  20. 20th December 1953A pseudocode algorithm is: count <- 0, x <- 10, WHILE x > 0, count <- count + 1, x <- x - 3, ENDWHILE, OUTPUT count. Complete a trace table for x and count, laid out as x | count, then state the value output.
  21. 21st December 1953Give one advantage of a star topology compared with a mesh topology.
  22. 22nd December 1953Name the translator used for assembly language and describe how it differs from a compiler.
  23. 23rd December 1953Add the 8-bit binary numbers 00101101 and 00010011, giving your answer as an 8-bit binary number.
  24. 24th December 1953State the three stages of the fetch-decode-execute cycle in the order they occur.
  25. 25th December 1953State one weakness of a simple shift cipher compared to modern encryption methods used on networks.
  26. 26th December 1953Explain what happens if a program tries to read index 5 of an array declared with 5 elements.
  27. 27th December 1953Define the term 'pixel'.
  28. 28th December 1953Order these from fastest access speed to slowest: RAM, cache, registers, secondary storage.
  29. 29th December 1953Which piece of UK legislation makes it a criminal offence to gain unauthorised access to a computer system?
  30. 30th December 1953Evaluate the expression 23 DIV 4.
  31. 31st December 1953State the value returned by LENGTH(word) if word stores the string 'Computer'.