And palmitic acid contains 16 carbons within that particular hydrocarbon chain. Now remember that each time a fatty acid undergoes a beta oxidation process, we shorten that fatty acid by two carbon atoms. And so what that means is because we have 16 carbon atoms within palmitic acid, more specifically, within the activated version of palmitic acid we call palmitoyl coenzyme A, then that means a total of seven cycles of beta oxidation will basically cleave the molecule and break it down into acetyl coenzyme A units. And to see exactly why seven, let's take a look at the following diagram. So we begin with our activated version of palmitic acid, palmitoil coenzyme A, and we have 1234 all the way to 16 carbon atoms within that hydrocarbon chain. Now, after six cycles of beta oxidation, we basically release six acetyl coenzyme A molecules and we have a molecule left over that contains four carbon atoms.