An 8 bit binary number can be split in the middle into two nibbles (4 bit numbers) which you can se below with the conversion of the binary number 10100111 to hexadecimal.
| Binary | 128 | 64 | 32 | 16 | 8 | 4 | 2 | 1 | Total |
| Value | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 167 |
| Nibbles | 8 | 4 | 2 | 1 | 8 | 4 | 2 | 1 | Hexadecimal |
| Value | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 | |
| Hexdecimal | 10 = A | 7 | A7 | ||||||
As you can see by splitting the number into two nibbles and treating each separately we can find each hex digit one at a time. Simply calculate the decimal value of each nibble and if the value is above 9 then convert it to the appropriate letter.
Use the area below to generate a random hex number to practice converting numbers from hexadecimal to decimal.
For our example let's convert the hexadecimal number 5F to it's binary equivalent.
We simply split the hex number in 2 and deal with each as its nibbles separately as can be seen below.
| Hexdecimal | 5 | F | 5F | ||||||
| Nibbles | 8 | 4 | 2 | 1 | 8 | 4 | 2 | 1 | Binary_value |
| Value | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 01011111 |
Click the button to get a number to convert
| Hexdecimal | |||||||||
| Nibbles | 8 | 4 | 2 | 1 | 8 | 4 | 2 | 1 | Binary_value |
| Value | |||||||||
Enter the binary values for each of the nibbles and the whole 8 bit binary number above (NOTE: Do NOT leave out leading zeros).