Information in Radio Waves Information Theory: Background The ability to communicate has been a key part of the development of human society. Communication could not happen without information being transferred in some way. Communication between two people face to face has many dimension (or channels) such as: facial expression, tone of voice, body language, vocabulary, any many more…. Communication at a distance can have many dimensions as well: yelling at the top of your voice (if possible), flashing lights, smoke signals. Can you think of others ….? In this unit of study we will be exploring the nature of information transfer and how it has been applied to the transmission of information using radio waves. Claude Shannon was MIT mathematician who is considered by most to be the inventor of information theory. He did many experiments with information in the form of yes and no answers to simple questions. Shannon developed a method for measuring the information content in a signal. He called the information content of a message, “entropy”. Entropy depends not only on the number of possible outcomes—in the case of a coin toss, two—but also on the probability of it happening. Improbable events, or surprising information, need a lot more questions to guess the message because they tell us more information we didn’t already know—just like the situation of taking a helicopter to school. (Bell 1999) In this unit you will work in teams to play some interesting and fun games related to information theory. As you play consider that many have stated that the Thesis work of Dr. Claude Shannon was the most important thesis ever written. His creative and playful imagination is what has brought about the technology that we all use on a daily basis.