What is a digital camera's "megapixel"?

What is a digital camera's "megapixel"?

Mark Comon (Vice President, Paul's Photo, Torrance, CA) gives expert video advice on: Can a digital camera capture high-quality video?; Can a cell phone capture high-quality stills?; Can a video camcorder capture high-quality digital stills? and more...

With regards to megapixels in digital camera picture quality, "Mega" means "million" and "Pixel" means "picture element". So, when you buy the megapixels on your digital camera, it is how many million picture elements or dots it can take. If you take a look at the newspaper with a magnifying glass, or go right up next to the TV, you'll see that the pictures are made up of individual little dots, these are pixels. Therefore if you have a six megapixel digital camera, it means that the image is roughly 3 pixels wide and 2 pixels high, because 3 times 2 is 6, hence six megapixels.