WHAT ARE THE FACTORS OF 48 – MINDSPARK

FACTORS OF 48

They are all those numbers that completely divide 48 leaving no remainder. 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 12, 16, 24 and 48 are the factors. Factors can be prime (the numbers that have only two factors- 1 and the number itself) or non-prime (numbers that have more than two factors). Some of the numbers above that are the factors of 48 are prime numbers while some are not. The table below helps in distinguishing them- 

1 is a number that is neither composite nor non-composite (prime). 

The factors can be written in pairs as well.

HOW TO FIND THE FACTORS OF 48?

It is easy to find factors of a number. 48 is a composite number and has more than two factors. We can start from 1 and count the numbers that completely divide 48 till the number 48. We will find all of them.

This is a time-consuming and impractical process and thus, to make things easier we use the methods listed below to find the factors easily.

FINDING FACTORS BY PRIME FACTORISATION 

Prime factorisation means breaking down a composite number as a product of its prime factors only. Prime factors are the factors that are essentially prime numbers. The two methods to find the prime factors are

•  the factor tree method
•  the long division method

Prime factorization using the factor tree method:

Under this method, we break the number and keep on breaking them until only prime numbers are left. The number 48 will be the root of the tree and the factors will be its branches. 

So, 48 = 3 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2

or, 24 x 3 = 48.

Long division method

Under this method, we use the smallest prime number that divides the number and we keep on dividing it in the table till the last quotient found is 1.

The answer remains the same with both the methods. We get 24 x 3 = 48 here as well.