Hexadecimal numbers are based on powers of ______.

Hexadecimal numbers are based on powers of ______.

• A. 2
• B. 8
• C. 16
• D. 10

Answer: (C)

Hexadecimal numbers are based on base 16, meaning each digit's place value is a power of 16 (16^0, 16^1, 16^2, …). The digits go from 0 to 9 and then A to F to represent 0–15. This base is especially handy in computing because 16 is 2^4, so each hex digit corresponds to four binary bits, making binary-hex conversions clean. The other bases correspond to powers of 2, 8, or 10, but hexadecimal specifically uses powers of 16.

Hexadecimal numbers are based on base 16, meaning each digit's place value is a power of 16 (16^0, 16^1, 16^2, …). The digits go from 0 to 9 and then A to F to represent 0–15. This base is especially handy in computing because 16 is 2^4, so each hex digit corresponds to four binary bits, making binary-hex conversions clean. The other bases correspond to powers of 2, 8, or 10, but hexadecimal specifically uses powers of 16.