Prime Factors

Every whole number greater than 1 is either a prime number or a composite number.

A prime number cannot be divided evenly by anything other than itself and 1. The first few prime numbers are 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, and so on. The number 1 is not a prime number.

All other numbers are composite, which means they can written as the product of prime factors. On this page we will look at a method for finding the prime factors of any composite number.