Computing, taken apart.

Learn each unit with in-depth visuals and explanations

AP Computer Science Principles

5 chapters

Creative development

collaboration, design and debugging

The development process as a ring of four stations (investigating and reflecting, designing, prototyping, testing) with a red ball traveling round it, while a blue program at the center grows a layer each lap, up to version 3

Data

bits, compression and information

Eight bit tiles in a row under their place values, 128 down to 1, each showing a paper face for 0 or a red face for 1, turning over as the byte counts up in binary while a card below reads the bits and their decimal value

Algorithms and programming

loops, lists and procedures

The exam’s robot, a red paper triangle, finds its way across a five-by-six board of paper squares with gray blocked squares toward a blue goal square, while beside it the REPEAT UNTIL program steering it lights its running line in red

Computer systems and networks

the Internet, fault tolerance and parallelism

A message, “HELLO, WORLD”, cut into six numbered red packets that cross a network of routers from a laptop to a server by different paths, arrive out of order, and are put back in order on a tray

Impact of computing

effects, access, bias, law and safety

A message box locked with the receiver’s open blue padlock crosses a network past a gray eavesdropper, its label scrambled, until the receiver’s red private key springs the lock open