How do you determine factors of 72?

Answer 1

A factor is any number that will divide 72 evenly. The brute-force way to find the factors of 72 is to try every number starting with 1. While this sounds awful, it's not really so bad because you only have to go up to 9:

72 / 1 = 72 (72 and 1 are factors)
72 / 2 = 36 (26 and 2 are factors)
72 / 3 = 24 (24 and 3 are factors)
72 / 4 = 18 (18 and 4 are factors)
72 / 5 = 14 remainder 2 (5 is not a factor)
72 / 6 = 12 (12 and 6 are factors)
72 / 7 = 10 remainder 2 (7 is not a factor)
72 / 8 = 9 (9 and 8 are factors)
72 / 9 = 9 (8 and 9 are factors) <--- we can stop now since we have factors that repeat.

so...the factors of 72 are 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 9, 12, 18, 24, 26, and 72.