What is the greatest common factor of 50 and 60?

Answer 1

10

What you do is you list out all the factors of 50:

50 (2, 5, 10, 25, 50)

And all the factors of 60:

60 (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 12, 15, 20, 30, 60)

Then you look through both lists and pick out the highest number that is in BOTH of the lists. In this case, that number would be 10, making 10 the greatest common factor of both 50 and 60.

Note: A factor is just a number that divides evenly into another number... if you divide 50 by 25, it equals 2, making 25 a factor of 50.

On the other hand if you divide 50 by 8, it equals 6.25, which is a decimal (meaning it does not divide evenly). This means that 8 is not a factor of 50.

I hope that helped and that it wasn't too confusing.~

Another Method:

The greatest common factor can also be calculated by identifying the common prime factors and multiplying them together.

The prime factors of 50 are 2, 5, and 5.

The prime factors of 60 are 2, 2, 3, and 5.

The prime factors in common are 2 and 5, so the greatest common factor is 2 x 5 = 10.

The Greatest Common Factor of 50, 60 is 10.

The Greatest Common Factor (GCF) is: 10