When you work with computers you see KB (or KiloBytes) and MB (or MegaBytes) all the time but what does it stand for? Basically it’s a measurement of memory on a computer. To help you understand exactly what in means there is an example below.

So What’s a Byte anyway?
When you get right down to it computers only know two things off and on.  That’s it just OFF and ON. And a computer expresses OFF as a “0” and ON as a “1”. Everything you see on the screen right now is just a specifically ordered combination of 1’s and 0’s to the computer that tell it exactly how to display this webpage. Now here’s the confusing part. Each individual 1 or 0 is called a BIT and 8 BITS together is called a BYTE. When you type a 0 the computer actually recognizes that zero as the series of 8 BITS or “00000000”

Here are some examples of what some other numbers and letters look like to the computer:

Here’s a link to even more if you’re curious: http://www.micron.com/k12/lessonplans/zerosones/asciibinary.html

So, in really super simplified terms, when I type the letter “L” the computer translates that to be the BYTE “01001100."  If I typed the letter “L” 50 times that would be 50 BYTES of information. If I typed the letter “L” 1000 times that would be 1000 BYTES or 1 KiloByte or 1KB.  Actually Bytes are measured in powers of 2 so 1KB isn't exactly 1000 bytes, but it is close enough.  Below is a chart of common abbreviations and their actual values in bytes:

To learn more about these bytes and their abbreviations try this site:
http://computer.howstuffworks.com/bytes1.htm

And here's some even more specific information about how bytes and mega bytes are measured:  http://www.t1shopper.com/tools/calculate/

PRACTICE ACTIVITY:  The next time you look in one of your folders on the computer take note of the size of the files.

TO KEEP ON LEARNING:  To learn more about computer memory try searching the internet for:

Bytes and Bits
How computer memory is measured
computer memory

Have a nice day!

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