What is the size of a megabyte in bytes?

• A. 1,000 bytes
• B. 1,000,000 bytes
• C. 100,000,000 bytes
• D. 10,000,000 bytes

Answer: (B)

A megabyte (MB) is a unit of digital information that is commonly used to quantify data storage capacity. Specifically, one megabyte is equal to 1,000,000 bytes. This measurement is based on the decimal (base 10) system where each step up in unit defines the next size as a factor of 1,000.

To put this into context, in digital storage, the sizes are often categorized in terms of bytes, kilobytes (KB), megabytes (MB), gigabytes (GB), and so on. A kilobyte is defined as 1,000 bytes, and when you multiply this value by 1,000 to convert to megabytes, you arrive at 1,000,000 bytes for one megabyte.

This understanding is critical when discussing data storage, as it helps clarify just how much data various storage devices can hold or how large files can be. The other choices represent incorrect values that do not align with this standard definition, illustrating either much smaller or larger data sizes.