Question

Find the prime factors of 60 by dividing by prime numbers.​

Answer 1

Let's start with the smallest prime number 2

60/2 = 30

Divide that result over 2

30/2 = 15

We can't divide this by 2 because 15/2 = 7.5 isn't a whole number

Let's move onto 3

15/3 = 5

The result is a prime number, so we stop.

The values we divided as denominators were: {2, 2, 3}

We add the result 5 to the set to completely list all of the prime factors of 60

The prime factorization would be

60 = 2*2*3*5

which is the same as saying

60 = 2^2*3*5