Sixteen is the number that comes after fifteen and before seventeen. It's written as 16 in numerals. If you count by ones from zero, sixteen is where you land after counting sixteen times.

Sixteen appears in many familiar places. There are sixteen ounces in a pound. A chessboard has sixteen pieces for each player at the start of a game. In music, a sixteenth note lasts for one-sixteenth the length of a whole note, making it one of the shorter notes you might play on an instrument.

The number sixteen is also what mathematicians call a perfect square because it equals four times four (4 × 4 = 16). You can arrange sixteen objects into a neat square grid of four rows and four columns. It's also two to the fourth power (2 × 2 × 2 × 2 = 16), which makes it useful in computer science.

In many places, turning sixteen marks an important milestone. In the United States, most states allow teenagers to get a driver's license at sixteen, which represents a significant step toward independence and responsibility.