16 (sixteen) is the natural number following 15 and preceding 17. It is the 4|fourth power of two. In English speech, the numbers 16 and 60 are sometimes confused, as they sound very similar.

Mathematics

16 is the ninth composite number, and a square number: 42 = 4 × 4 (the first non-unitary fourth-power prime of the form p4). It is the smallest number with exactly five divisors, its proper divisors being, , and. Sixteen is the only integer that equals mn and nm, for some unequal integers m and n (m=4, n=2, or vice versa). It has this property because. It is also equal to 32 (see tetration). The aliquot sum of 16 is 155-number), within an aliquot sequence of four composite members (16, 155-number), 9, 4, 3, 1, 0) that belong to the prime 3-aliquot tree. 16 is the only number that can be both the perimeter and area of the same square, due to 4^{2} being equal to 4\times 4. The sedenions form a 16-dimensional hypercomplex number system.

Hexadecimal

Sixteen is the base of the hexadecimal number system, which is used extensively in computer science.

Science

Chemistry

Group 16 of the periodic table are the chalcogens. 16 is the atomic number of sulfur.

Psychology

Technology

Culture

As a unit of measurement

A low power of two, 16 was used in weighing light objects in several cultures. Early civilizations utilized the weighing scale as a means to measure mass, which made splitting resources into equal parts a simple task. In the imperial system, 16 ounces equivalates to one pound. Until the State Council of the People's Republic of China decreed a decimal conversion for currency in 1959, China equivalated 16 liǎng to one jīn. Chinese Taoists did finger computation on the trigrams and hexagrams by counting the finger tips and joints of the fingers with the tip of the thumb. Each hand can count up to 16 in such manner. The Chinese abacus uses two upper beads to represent the 5s and 5 lower beads to represent the 1s, the 7 beads can represent a hexadecimal digit from 0 to 15 in each column.

Age 16

Other fields