Interesting Facts on Factors

Asking a student to find all the factor's of an integer is a relatively simple and common task. Similarly, finding the prime factorization is often asked of our students. It is essential for methods of finding the GCF and LCM that are often taught. However, there are some other very interesting questions surrounding those topics.

• How many factors does an integer have?
• What is the sum of the factors of an integer?
• What is the product of the factors?
• How many odd factors does it have?
• How many even factors?

These questions are all answerable by looking at the prime factorization the integer in question. The following two videos show this process:

This is a great topic to share with your advanced students. It is a way to make prime factorizations more interesting.

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