Factors and Prime Factorisation

A number may be made by multiplying two or more other numbers together. The numbers that are multiplied together are called factors of the final number. All numbers have a factor of one since one multiplied by any number equals that number. All numbers can be divided by themselves to produce the number one. Therefore, we normally ignore one and the number itself as useful factors. Ex. 15 - The number fifteen can be divided into two factors which are three and five. The number twelve could be divided into two factors which are 6 and 2. Six could be divided into two further factors of 2 and 3. Therefore the factors of twelve are 2, 2, and 3. If twelve was first divided into the factors 3 and 4, the four could be divided into factors of 2 and 2. Therefore the factors of twelve are still 2, 2, and 3. There are several clues to help determine factors. Any even number has a factor of two Any number ending in 5 has a factor of five Any number above 0 that ends with 0 (such as 10, 30, 1200) has factors of two and five. To determine factors see if one of the above rules apply (ends in 5, 0 or an even number). If none of the rules apply, there still may be factors of 3 or 7 or some other number.
A factor is simply a number that is multiplied to get a product . Factoring a number means taking the number apart to find its factors--it's like multiplying in reverse . Here are lists of all the factors of 16, 20, and 45. 16 --> 1, 2, 4, 8, 16 20 --> 1, 2, 4, 5, 10, 20 45 --> 1, 3, 5, 9, 15, 45 12 --> 12, 24, 36, 48, 60, . . . 5 --> 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, . . . 7 --> 7, 14, 21, 28, 35, . . . Rules:

1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

1 is a factor of every number. Every number is a factor of itself. Every factor of a number is an exact divisor of that number. Every factor is less than or equal to the given number. The number of factors of a given number is countable.

Factors are either composite numbers or prime numbers. A prime number has only two factors, one and itself, so it cannot be divided evenly by any other numbers. Here's a list of prime numbers up to 100. You can see that none of these numbers can be factored any further. PRIME NUMBERS to 100 2,3,5,7,11,13,17,19,23,29,31,37,41,43, 47,53,59,61,67,71,73,79,83,89,97 A composite number is any number that has more than two factors. Here's a list of composite numbers up to 20. You can see that they can all be factored further. For example, 4 equals 2 times 2, 6 equals 3 times 2, 8 equals 4 times 2, and so forth. By the way, zero and one are considered neither prime nor composite numbers-they're in a class by themselves! COMPOSITE NUMBERS up to 20 4,6,8,9,10,12,14,15,16,18,20

Factors and Prime Factorisation

You can write any composite number as a product of prime factors. This is called prime factorization. To find the prime factors of a number, you divide the number by the smallest possible prime number and work up the list of prime numbers until the result is itself a prime number.

Let's use this method to find the prime factors of 168. Since 168 is even, we start by dividing it by the smallest prime number, 2. 168 divided by 2 is 84. 84 divided by 2 is 42. 42 divided by 2 is 21. Since 21 is not divisible by 2, we try dividing by 3, the next biggest prime number. We find that 21 divided by 3 equals 7, and 7 is a prime number. We know 168 is now fully factored. We simply list the divisors to write the factors of 168. 168 2 = 84 84 2 = 42 42 2 = 21 21 3 = 7 Prime number prime factors = 2 2 2 3 7 To check the answer, multiply these factors and make sure they equal 168. Here are the prime factors of the composite numbers between 1 and 20. 4=22 6=32 8=222 9=33 10 = 5 2 12 = 3 2 2 14 = 7 2 15 = 5 3 16 = 2 2 2 2 18 = 3 3 2 20 = 5 2 2

2. Ex. 2 2