What Makes a Number ‘Prime’ or ‘Composite’?

Numbers can be like friends or loners. Prime numbers are the loners, they only have two friends: 1 and themselves. Composite numbers are the social ones, they have more than two friends, meaning they can be divided by other numbers besides 1 and themselves.

What’s a Prime Number?

A prime number is like a special kind of number that can’t be split evenly by any other number except 1 and itself. For example, 5 is a prime number because you can only divide it by 1 or 5.

What’s a Composite Number?

A composite number is the opposite, it has more than two friends. Like 6, which can be divided by 1, 2, 3, and 6.

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Examples

A prime number is like a cookie that can only be shared evenly by two people, you and your friend.
A composite number is like a pizza that can be divided among many people, not just two.
If 7 is the only number that divides 7 evenly, then it's a prime number.

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Categories: Math · prime numbers· composite numbers· number theory · Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.