Power of two
Play this lessonThis lesson comes with an interactive animation you can break, a live-code challenge and a chapter quiz.Data volume can get enormous, but the math always comes down to the basics. A byte is 8 bits, and one ASCII character takes one byte. Every unit is 2¹⁰ (1,024, roughly a thousand) times the previous one:
| Power | Approximate value | Full name | Short |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2¹⁰ | 1 thousand | 1 Kilobyte | 1 KB |
| 2²⁰ | 1 million | 1 Megabyte | 1 MB |
| 2³⁰ | 1 billion | 1 Gigabyte | 1 GB |
| 2⁴⁰ | 1 trillion | 1 Terabyte | 1 TB |
| 2⁵⁰ | 1 quadrillion | 1 Petabyte | 1 PB |
Key takeaways
- Each step up is ×1,024 (≈ ×1,000).
- Thousand → KB, million → MB, billion → GB, trillion → TB, quadrillion → PB.