Part of Lesson Plan: B8- Peeking Inside a Computer File- Using a Hex Editor

Activity Overview / Details

There is a story told about a mathematician, an engineer, a physicist and a computer programmer who were driving in a car together to a conference. The car had a flat tire and they got out to try to figure out what to do.

The mathematician said, “I think I see the problem. The tire is no longer round on the bottom. But what can we do to fix it?”

The physicist replied, “the solution is obvious. The tire is still round on the top. What we need to do is jack up the car, turn the tire over so the round part is  on the bottom and we can be on our way.”

The engineer sad, “That won’t work! We should jack up the car, take off the tire and replace it with another tire. Then we can be on our way.”

The computer programmer thought for a minute and said, “Why don’t we treat it like a computer? Let’s just turn the car completely off for a minute, drink a cup of coffee, start it back up and see if the problem fixes itself!”

This is how we sometimes feel when working with computers. Whatever goes on inside is very mysterious, so we just try whatever we can think to do “from the outside” and hope it works. Hopefully, these programs we have used today will help you feel like you know a little more what goes on inside a computer.