An egg carton full of eight eggs holds the number 255 and empty carton holds the number zero. There are 256 possible combinations of eggs in the carton and depending on how those eggs are arranged, your computer sees different numbers in different locations. This is how your computer sees every memory location. It doesn t see an image of a number the way we do. Understanding bits as parts of bytes, it s safe to say that bits physically exist and bytes are ethereal.
Bits are physical switches that either hold a one or a zero a charge or no charge.
Bytes are the notion of what those bits represent. Just checking to see if you're paying attention. Any bit with a 1 in it has its power added to the resulting byte. I know it sounds complicated, but the computer accomplishes this quite naturally, just like you can look at the image of a number and instantly recognize it, something for which a computer needs a complex program and libraries. You do this in a way that s not so different than a computer.