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Daily Practice · GCSE Computer Science

December 2012 - GCSE Computer Science 5-a-day

Every GCSE Computer Science sheet published in December 2012, with answers. Systems, data representation, networks, algorithms and programming.

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December 2012

31 sheets · 155 questions · GCSE

December 2012 compilationAll answers

Every sheet in December 2012

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 2012Convert the denary number 156 to an 8 bit binary number.
  2. 2nd December 2012Which type of malware can replicate itself and spread across a network without attaching to another program or needing a user to run it?
  3. 3rd December 2012Write a loop in pseudocode that outputs every element of a 1D array named names of length 6.
  4. 4th December 2012An image uses a colour depth of 2 bits per pixel. Calculate the maximum number of different colours it can represent.
  5. 5th December 2012A 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.
  6. 6th December 2012Describe two negative consequences of throwing away old computer hardware instead of recycling it.
  7. 7th December 2012Write a function called isEven that takes one integer parameter, num, and returns True if num is even and False otherwise.
  8. 8th December 2012State the pseudocode operator commonly used to join (concatenate) two strings, then show how it joins 'Rev' and 'ision' to produce 'Revision'.
  9. 9th December 2012A 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.
  10. 10th December 2012A 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?
  11. 11th December 2012Explain why iterative testing, carried out throughout development, tends to make errors cheaper to fix than relying only on final testing.
  12. 12th December 2012Define the term 'primary key' as used in a database table.
  13. 13th December 2012Define the term 'interrupt' as used to describe a signal received by a CPU.
  14. 14th December 2012An 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.
  15. 15th December 2012Evaluate X = NOT A AND B when A = 0 and B = 1.
  16. 16th December 2012Convert the 8-bit binary number 10110100 directly to hexadecimal by splitting it into nibbles.
  17. 17th December 2012Give one advantage of a star topology compared with a mesh topology.
  18. 18th December 2012Name the translator used for assembly language and describe how it differs from a compiler.
  19. 19th December 2012Add the 8-bit binary numbers 00101101 and 00010011, giving your answer as an 8-bit binary number.
  20. 20th December 2012State the three stages of the fetch-decode-execute cycle in the order they occur.
  21. 21st December 2012State one weakness of a simple shift cipher compared to modern encryption methods used on networks.
  22. 22nd December 2012Explain what happens if a program tries to read index 5 of an array declared with 5 elements.
  23. 23rd December 2012Define the term 'pixel'.
  24. 24th December 2012Order these from fastest access speed to slowest: RAM, cache, registers, secondary storage.
  25. 25th December 2012Which piece of UK legislation makes it a criminal offence to gain unauthorised access to a computer system?
  26. 26th December 2012Evaluate the expression 23 DIV 4.
  27. 27th December 2012A function is defined as: FUNCTION addTax(price) RETURN price x 1.2 ENDFUNCTION. Another line of code runs: total <- addTax(20) + addTax(30). Trace both function calls and state the final value of total.
  28. 28th December 2012A 1 TB hard disk drive costs 40 pounds. A 500 GB solid-state drive costs 60 pounds. Calculate the cost per gigabyte of each device, and state which is cheaper per GB. Use 1 TB = 1000 GB.
  29. 29th December 2012Define the term protocol.
  30. 30th December 2012A 'quantity' field on a website must only accept whole numbers from 1 to 10. Which validation check identifies that 15 has been entered?
  31. 31st December 2012A table called staff has fields staffId, name, department and salary, storing these records: staffId | name | department | salary, 1 | Ben | Sales | 24000, 2 | Chloe | IT | 31000, 3 | Dan | Sales | 27000. State which staffId(s) would be returned by: SELECT staffId FROM staff WHERE department = 'Sales' AND salary > 25000;