
ICSE (Class XII)
Syllabus (2013)
Subject: Computer Science
There will be two papers in the subject:
Paper I: Theory- 3 hours …100 marks
Paper II: Practical- 3 hours …100 marks
PAPER I-THEORY
Paper 1 shall be of 3 hours duration and be divided into two parts.
Part I (30 marks): This part will consist of compulsory short answer
questions, testing knowledge, application and skills relating to the entire
syllabus.
Part II (70 marks): This part will be divided into three Sections, A, B and
C. Candidates are required to answer three questions out of four from Section A
and two questions out of three in each of the Sections B and C. Each question in
this part shall carry 10 marks.
SECTION A
1. Boolean Algebra
(a) Propositional logic, well formed formulae, truth values and
interpretation of well formed formulae (wff), truth tables, satisfiable,
unsatisfiable and valid formulae. Equivalence laws and their use in simplifying
wffs.
(b) Binary valued quantities; basic postulates of Boolean algebra; operations
AND, OR and NOT; truth tables.
(c) Basic theorems of Boolean algebra (e.g. Duality, idempotence,
commutativity, associativity, distributivity, operations with 0 and 1,
complements, absorption, involution); De Morgan’s theorem and its applications;
reducing Boolean expressions to sum of products and product of sums forms;
Karnaugh maps (up to four variables).
2. Computer Hardware
(a) Elementary logic gates (NOT, AND, OR, NAND, NOR, XOR, XNOR) and their use
in circuits.
(b) Applications of Boolean algebra and logic gates to half adders, full
adders, encoders, decoders, multiplexers, NAND, NOR as universal gates.