Video Transcript
Write 46 as a product of primes.
We need to take 46 and find two prime factors that it has. To do this, we need to know what a prime number is. It’s a number that’s divisible only by itself and one. It’s helpful to memorize the first few prime numbers. The first four are two, three, five, and seven.
When we look at 46, we see that it ends in six, making it an even number. And that means we know that two times something will equal 46. To find out what that value is, we need to divide 46 by two. Two goes into four two times. Two times two equals four. And then we subtract four minus four equals zero. Bring down your six. How many times does two go into six? Three times. Three times two equals six, and six minus six is zero. And that tells us that two times 23 equals 46.
We know that two is a prime number. And in fact, 23 is also a prime number. 23 is only divisible by itself and one. To write 46 as a product of primes, we can write two times 23. Two times 23 does equal 46, and both two and 23 are prime numbers.
