SOMEONE HELP ME OUT PLEASE! I'M READING THIS QUESTION AND I CAN'T UNDERSTAND WHAT DOES THIS MEAN????
Write the prime factorization so that the factors are written in ascending order (from smallest to largest). Show the individual steps including your factor tree. Then enter into the answer box the prime factorization using "*" for multiplication and "^" for exponentiation. 42 = ?
Answers
Answer:
Prime numbers are natural numbers (positive whole numbers that sometimes include 0 in certain definitions) that are greater than 1, that cannot be formed by multiplying two smaller numbers. An example of a prime number is 7, since it can only be formed by multiplying the numbers 1 and 7. Other examples include 2, 3, 5, 11, etc.
Numbers that can be formed with two other natural numbers, that are greater than 1, are called composite numbers. Examples of this include numbers like, 4, 6, 9, etc.
Prime numbers are widely used in number theory due to the fundamental theorem of arithmetic. This theorem states that natural numbers greater than 1 are either prime, or can be factored as a product of prime numbers. As an example, the number 60 can be factored into a product of prime numbers as follows:
60 = 5 × 3 × 2 × 2
As can be seen from the example above, there are no composite numbers in the factorization