Explain that repeating patterns, like drumbeats or flashes of light, can be used to encode and send information, and connect this idea to digital signals made of two states.
A wave can carry more than just energy; it can carry information, if the pattern itself means something. Long ago, people sent messages by beating drums in patterns, long-short-long, or flashing lights, long-short-short, where each pattern stood for a specific letter or message that a listener on the other end could decode.
Modern computers and phones send information the same way, just much faster: as patterns of two simple states, usually called 1 and 0, or on and off. A tiny burst of light or electricity means one thing, and its absence means another, and long strings of these two states combine to encode letters, numbers, pictures, and sound.
Mastery looks like: They can explain that patterns like drumbeats or flashes can encode information by agreement, and connect that idea to digital 1s and 0s.
Common stumbles: Thinking a pattern has meaning by itself without an agreed-upon code; confusing the pattern, the wave, with the message it represents.