Daily Practice · GCSE Computer Science
August 1996 - GCSE Computer Science 5-a-day
Every sheet in August 1996
The same date always regenerates the same five questions, so a sheet you print today is the sheet a classmate prints tomorrow.
- 1st August 1996A CPU has a clock speed of 4.0 GHz. Calculate how many clock cycles it completes in 2 seconds.
- 2nd August 1996A simple cipher shifts every letter 2 places forward in the alphabet, wrapping around so Y becomes A and Z becomes B. Encrypt the plaintext CAT using this cipher.
- 3rd August 1996Explain what happens if a program tries to read index 5 of an array declared with 5 elements.
- 4th August 1996A mono sound clip has a sample rate of 4000 Hz and lasts 2 seconds. Calculate the total number of samples taken.
- 5th August 1996State the type of program that is typically stored in ROM.
- 6th August 1996State one reason a small business might choose to use open source software instead of proprietary (closed source) software.
- 7th August 1996A FOR loop runs: total = 0, FOR i = 1 TO 4, total = total + i, NEXT i. State the value of total after the loop finishes.
- 8th August 1996Give one specific way this code could be refined without changing what it does: a = 5, b = 3, c = a + b, PRINT c
- 9th August 1996State the typical maximum capacity of a single-layer DVD.
- 10th August 1996Define the term protocol.
- 11th August 1996State what is meant by a syntax error.
- 12th August 1996A table called members has fields memberId, firstName, lastName and joinYear. Write an SQL statement that adds a new record with memberId 12, firstName 'Priya', lastName 'Shah' and joinYear 2026.
- 13th August 1996What type of utility software reorganises files on a hard disk so fragmented parts are stored closer together?
- 14th August 1996Calculate the maximum number of comparisons required by a binary search on a sorted list of 512 items.
- 15th August 1996Given P = 0 and Q = 1, state the value of P OR Q.
- 16th August 1996Convert the hexadecimal number FF to an 8-bit binary number.
- 17th August 1996A network administrator is connecting 10 computers in a server room. Calculate the number of cables needed for a full mesh topology, and state the number needed for a star topology with one central switch.
- 18th August 1996Explain the purpose of a breakpoint.
- 19th August 1996Convert the 4-bit binary number 1101 to denary.
- 20th August 1996Two CPUs are compared for a task optimised for multiple cores: CPU A has 2 cores at 4.2 GHz; CPU B has 6 cores at 3.0 GHz. Explain which CPU is likely to perform better for this task.
- 21st August 1996State why an organisation might employ penetration testers to test its network.
- 22nd August 1996Explain why a running maximum should be initialised to the first element of the array rather than to 0.
- 23rd August 1996State one example of a file format that commonly uses lossy compression.
- 24th August 1996State how many bits are in one byte, and how many bytes are in one kibibyte (KiB).
- 25th August 1996State whether the source code of proprietary (closed source) software is normally available for the public to view.
- 26th August 1996Write one line of pseudocode that converts the string stored in heightInput into a real number and stores it in a variable called height.
- 27th August 1996State the correct order of the three operations used to read data from a text file.
- 28th August 1996Order these units of data from smallest to largest: megabyte, byte, gigabyte, kilobyte.
- 29th August 1996Name the four layers of the TCP/IP model in order from the one closest to the user.
- 30th August 1996Give one example of erroneous test data for a field that only accepts whole numbers from 1 to 10.
- 31st August 1996A table called products has fields productId, name, price and stock. Write an SQL statement that changes the price of the product with productId 7 to 15.99.