What is hexadecimal?
Hexadecimal is a number system which is often used by programmers to simplify the binary numbering system. You can represent very large numbers in hexadecimal in a way that’s much easier for humans to read large numbers. It is also easy to convert between hexadecimal and binary as we will see later.
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How does hexadecimal work?
Our number system is decimal or base 10. Thus means that to make any number we can use a combination of up to 10 numbers: 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8 and 9.
Hexadecimal is base 16 which means that to make any number we can use a combination of up to 16 alphanumeric characters ( numbers or letters). We start as normal: 0123456789. When we run out of numbers we use the first letters of the alphabet: a represents 10, b represents 11 and so on until we get to f which represents 15. See the image on the right. |
Hexadecimal to Decimal
To convert a hexadecimal number to decimal we carry out the following steps.
- Write out the number line. See the first row below. We start with 1 on the right, then multiply by our base (16) to work out the other numbers.
- Write out the hexadecimal number to convert. I have chosen the first McDonald's order: becbe.
- Convert the numbers into normal numbers.
- Multiply the normal number with the top line. As you can see below 11 * 65,536 = 720,896.
- Add all the results together.
Representing Colours in Hexadecimal
Hexadecimal Colour Picker.If you are feeling brave you can work out your own hexadecimal colour values. Or you can use this website.
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