Activity 3
Digital Imaging
Background Information
Numbers are relatively easy to represent digitally. Just seven units are required to display the digits from zero to nine, and this is the representation often seen at a gasoline pump at a filling station. Notice that each unit of the image is a line.
Letters are more difficult to represent in this way, especially such letters as “D, G, J, K, M, N,Q, R, S, V, W, X, Y, and Z.” In general, these letters contain diagonal parts or curved parts, which require an array of small pixels to display. The more pixels in the array, the more detail can be shown.
The number of pixels per unit length is clearly an important property of a digital display. The corresponding property is resolution. Resolution is the ability to detect detail. The human eye can typically resolve detail at an angle of about 1/60 of a degree. Most people cannot see the dots in a magazine photo at a normal reading distance. Looking through a magnifier improves the resolution, and the dots are visible.
Digital Imaging
Background Information
Numbers are relatively easy to represent digitally. Just seven units are required to display the digits from zero to nine, and this is the representation often seen at a gasoline pump at a filling station. Notice that each unit of the image is a line.
Letters are more difficult to represent in this way, especially such letters as “D, G, J, K, M, N,Q, R, S, V, W, X, Y, and Z.” In general, these letters contain diagonal parts or curved parts, which require an array of small pixels to display. The more pixels in the array, the more detail can be shown.
The number of pixels per unit length is clearly an important property of a digital display. The corresponding property is resolution. Resolution is the ability to detect detail. The human eye can typically resolve detail at an angle of about 1/60 of a degree. Most people cannot see the dots in a magazine photo at a normal reading distance. Looking through a magnifier improves the resolution, and the dots are visible.