Divisibility rules help you find the factors of a number. Once you've found the factors for two or more numbers, you can find what they have in common. Take 231 and 321. If you know the divisibility rules, you know that they are both divisible by 3, so 3 is a common factor.
Chat with our AI personalities
Suppose you were trying to find the prime factorization of 123. You know that half of the divisors will be less than the square root. Since the square root is between 11 and 12, you only need to test 2, 3, 5, 7 and 11 as prime factors. If you know the rules of divisibility, you already know that 2 and 5 aren't factors and 3 is. It saves time.
By the rules of divisibility, you know that 40 is divisible by 1, 2, 4 and 5. Dividing those numbers into 40 gives you the rest. (40,1)(20,2)(10,4)(8,5)
There is always a common factor. If there are no common prime factors, the GCF is 1.
There cannot be a common factor of just one number. To be common there need to be at least two numbers. If you find all the factors of two or more numbers, and you find some factors are the same ("common"), then the largest of those common factors is the Greatest Common Factor.
First, find the prime factorization. Use a factor tree. 189 63,3 21,3,3 7,3,3,3 All the other factors will be combinations of these. There are eight altogether. You know that 1, 3 and 7 are factors. The rules of divisibility tells you that 9 is as well. Dividing them into 189 gives you the rest. 1, 3, 7, 9, 21, 27, 63, 189