Prime Factorization #6

[one speaker]

[find the prime factorization of the following: 250]

Narrator: Find the prime factorization of the following. So we’re going to take 250 and break it down into its prime factors, so let’s rewrite 250, and we can see right off that because it ends in a zero that it’s divisible by 10. So let’s just divide that by 10 and 10, 250 divided by 10 would be 25. So 10 times 25 is 250 so we know that both 10 and 25 are factors of 250. We can’t stop there because neither one of those are prime, so if we want to break 10 down into its prime factors we know it’s divisible by 2 because it’s even and so we have two times five are factors of 10, and two is prime because it’s only divisible evenly by itself and one, and five is prime for the same reason, so we’re done over here, but we need to come over here. [to the 25]. We know that factors of 25 would be 5 and 5, so 5 times 5 is 25,and again, we already saw that 5 was prime. So we know that these are prime and that we can stop. So the prime factorization of 250 can be written as 2 times 5 times 5 times 5 or it can also be written as two times 5 to the third power.    

[end of video]