What is 2 to the power of 10?

Two to the tenth is 1024, and it is worth memorising because it anchors so much of computing. Doubling from one gives 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024, and those numbers appear everywhere in file sizes, memory chips, colour depths and network addresses, because binary hardware works in powers of two. The closeness of 1024 to 1000 is why a kilobyte was originally defined as 1024 bytes rather than a literal thousand, a convenient fudge that quietly grows as you scale up: a megabyte is 1024 squared, and by the time you reach a terabyte the gap between the binary and decimal definitions is over ten per cent, which is why advertised drive capacities look smaller once formatted. Standards bodies introduced kibibyte and mebibyte to name the binary versions unambiguously. Powers of two also grow alarmingly fast, which is the point of the old story about doubling grains of rice on a chessboard.

Because 2 to the tenth is roughly 1000, every ten binary doublings correspond to about three decimal ones.