Size is an adjective that refers to the dimension, body, thickness, measure or thickness of something. The concept relates to how small or large a physical object is. For example: “Magalí adopted a large dog”, “I like the room, but the size makes me think: will there be room for all the guests?”. , “Buy a ream of A4 size sheets. ”
The concept can be used in many ways. Take the case of humans: size can be related to height, weight, or a combination of both. It could even be related to the person’s musculature. A man who is 1.95 meters tall and weighs 110 kilograms can be classified as a large individual. On the other hand, an adult of 1.50 meters and 48 kilos is a small person.
The size of a building, on the other hand, can be measured by the number of stories or stories it has. Likewise, a house will have a small or large size depending on the number of rooms or rooms. If we focus on cities or countries, the idea of size is linked to the surface or the number of inhabitants. Tokyo (Japan), with more than 13 million inhabitants, is a city of immense dimensions. The Vatican, on the other hand, has less than 1,000 stable inhabitants: its size is very small. In the case of computing, the term size is used to measure files in terms of the number of memory units they occupy on disk, which are usually bytes and all their multiples, such as kilobytes, megabytes, and gigabytes. In some Spanish-speaking regions, the word “peso” is used as a synonym for size in the same sense, although the latter is preferred, since it is more consistent with the English term size, designated with this meaning. As with some of the examples above, the size of a file can be viewed objectively and invariant over time, or subjectively and relative to time. For example, when expressed in the corresponding memory units, the size will always be the same no matter who looks at it: a 24-megabyte document will occupy the same space today as it will three decades from now. On the other hand, saying that it is a “very large” or “very small” document is a subjective observation, because with the advancement of technology, files tend to be larger, which also occurs with the capacity of storage media. , for whom this perception varies over time.
But the storage of digital data is not as precise as it is thought, so it is necessary to take the example of the 24 megabyte document. First of all, it should be noted that these round numbers do not indicate actual disk space, but generally make it easier for the user to read. On the other hand, saying that it will never change in size over the years is not entirely true, since the file system of the disk can change the result. A file system is the set of methods and structures used by the operating system to store files on a disk or on each partition on it. In other words, it’s about how you organize data on the storage medium. As the system determines, among other things, the minimum size that a file can have, when dividing the disk into blocks, the same document can reflect different sizes, depending on the system used. The notion still applies to symbolic matters: “It was a great tragedy”, “I feel a gigantic happiness”.
