Number 16

16

= 2 × 2 × 2 × 2
A fourth power.

= 4 × 4
A square.

= 2 × 8

= 1 + 3 + 5 + 7

There are 16 ounces in a pound.

Sixteenmo is the size of a book made by folding each sheet of paper into 16 leaves.

In biology, if a cell divides itself in half every 30 minutes, you will have 16 cells in 2 hours.

16 pieces are used by each player in a game of chess.

Caterpillars typically have 16 legs. But when they emerge from their chrysalis as a butterfly or moth, they have only six legs.


Under British law, when you reach the age of 16 –


16 as a 4 by 4 square.
16 as a 4 by 4 square.


Compass rose
This compass rose is divided into 16 points: north, north-north-east, north-east, east-north-east, east ... and so on. Old maps and charts often included a rose like this to show the compass directions.


16 pebbles feature in Samuel Becket's novel Molloy which has one of the longest and most detailed accounts of someone working at a mathematical problem in a work of fiction -

I took advantage of being at the seaside to lay in a store of sucking-stones. They were pebbles but I call them stones. Yes, on this occasion I laid in a considerable store. I distributed them equally between my four pockets, and sucked them turn and turn about. This raised a problem...

The following six pages of the novel describe different solutions to the problem of ensuring all 16 pebbles are sucked equally often.


16 chocolates packed as 2 by 2 by 4.
16 chocolates packed as 2 by 2 by 4.


Number 16