Daily Practice · GCSE Computer Science

November 1997 - GCSE Computer Science 5-a-day

Every sheet in November 1997

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

  1. 1st November 1997A 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.
  2. 2nd November 1997Describe what a nested loop does when it processes a 2D array.
  3. 3rd November 1997A mono sound clip has a sample rate of 4000 Hz and lasts 2 seconds. Calculate the total number of samples taken.
  4. 4th November 1997State the type of program that is typically stored in ROM.
  5. 5th November 1997State one reason a small business might choose to use open source software instead of proprietary (closed source) software.
  6. 6th November 1997A FOR loop runs: total = 0, FOR i = 1 TO 4, total = total + i, NEXT i. State the value of total after the loop finishes.
  7. 7th November 1997Give one specific way this code could be refined without changing what it does: a = 5, b = 3, c = a + b, PRINT c
  8. 8th November 1997State the typical maximum capacity of a single-layer DVD.
  9. 9th November 1997Give two reasons why network communication is divided into layers.
  10. 10th November 1997State what is meant by a syntax error.
  11. 11th November 1997A 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.
  12. 12th November 1997What type of utility software reorganises files on a hard disk so fragmented parts are stored closer together?
  13. 13th November 1997Calculate the maximum number of comparisons required by a binary search on a sorted list of 512 items.
  14. 14th November 1997Given P = 0 and Q = 1, state the value of P OR Q.
  15. 15th November 1997Convert the hexadecimal number FF to an 8-bit binary number.
  16. 16th November 1997A 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.
  17. 17th November 1997Explain why an interpreter is often preferred while a program is being written.
  18. 18th November 1997Convert the 4-bit binary number 1101 to denary.
  19. 19th November 1997Two 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.
  20. 20th November 1997State why an organisation might employ penetration testers to test its network.
  21. 21st November 1997A 2D array grid is declared as grid[4][6]. State how many rows and columns it has and how many elements it holds in total.
  22. 22nd November 1997State one example of a file format that commonly uses lossy compression.
  23. 23rd November 1997State how many bits are in one byte, and how many bytes are in one kibibyte (KiB).
  24. 24th November 1997State whether the source code of proprietary (closed source) software is normally available for the public to view.
  25. 25th November 1997Write one line of pseudocode that converts the string stored in heightInput into a real number and stores it in a variable called height.
  26. 26th November 1997State the correct order of the three operations used to read data from a text file.
  27. 27th November 1997Order these units of data from smallest to largest: megabyte, byte, gigabyte, kilobyte.
  28. 28th November 1997State the layer that IP operates in, and describe its job.
  29. 29th November 1997Give one example of erroneous test data for a field that only accepts whole numbers from 1 to 10.
  30. 30th November 1997A 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.