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Chapter 3 · Finding Common Ground

Reading every factor of a number off its prime factorisation

Teaching notesNCERT10 min

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10 min.

These teaching notes are for members

What the video covers, what to say before it, where a class usually goes wrong, and what to set afterwards. An account is free, and it opens every chapter of every book.

What to assume they know

  • Breaking a number down to primes, and why the result is unique — producing a prime factorisation, and the fact that the primes you get do not depend on where you started splitting
  • Rearranging a product without changing its value
  • Reading a product of several primes as a single number, and back again
  • Class 6 Prime Time: a factor divides exactly

What they should be able to do

  • Decide whether a stated product of primes divides a stated number, by looking at its factorisation instead of by dividing
  • Say what the other half of the pair must be when a subpart is pulled out
  • Explain why a subpart of the factorisation must be a factor
  • Explain why nothing outside the factorisation can be a factor — and identify where the previous topic's result is doing that work
  • List every factor of a number by taking its prime factors none at a time, one at a time, two at a time, and so on
  • Say why 1 has to be put into that list separately
  • Assess a claim of the pattern-spotting kind by looking for a single example that breaks it
  • State, with an example, why a larger number need not have a longer factorisation or more factors

Where it usually goes wrong

  • "Every subpart of the factorisation is a factor — so 3 × 3 × 3 is a factor of 840." It is not a subpart. 840's factorisation holds a single 3, so you cannot cut three of them out of it. The word subpart is doing precise work: you may take a prime only as many times as it is actually there. Make the running-out visible.
  • "You could still find a factor that is not made of the number's own primes." You could not, and this is exactly where the previous topic pays off: if the factorisation were not forced, a factor built from other primes would be conceivable.
  • "With four primes there are four ways to choose two of them." 225 = 3 × 3 × 5 × 5 has four prime factors and only three distinct products from a pair, because 3 × 3, 3 × 5 and 5 × 5 exhaust the possibilities and the two 3s are interchangeable. Repeats collapse. Any enumeration that treats the copies as different produces duplicates and an inflated count.
  • "1 is not really a factor." It is, it belongs in the list, and it is the one entry that is not a positive-length subpart — it is what you get by taking no primes at all. The book adds it explicitly for that reason.
  • "A larger number must have more factors." 121 against 96 kills this in one line. So does the observation that primes of any size have exactly two.
  • "A claim that works for the examples I tried is true." It is a conjecture until it is argued for every case. The book prints Anshu's claim precisely because it is plausible and false.

Questions to check understanding

  • Given a number's prime factorisation, decide whether a stated product is a factor of it, and justify the decision
  • Given a factor, state the co-factor without dividing
  • List a number's factors in full, working from its prime factorisation
  • State how many factors a given number has
  • Judge a stated claim about numbers and, if it is false, supply one instance that breaks it
  • Explain why two numbers with the same number of digits can have very different numbers of factors
  • Items of this shape are the whole of the "Figure it Out" block on p.51 of Part II and recur in the closing exercise block (Part II, p.63, questions 2 and 3 — both sit on p.63; neither runs on to p.64)

Examples worth working on the board

  • 840 (Part II, §3.1, pp.50–51). Its factorisation as the book prints it: 2 × 2 × 2 × 3 × 5 × 7. The regrouping the book performs: 840 = (2 × 2 × 7) × (2 × 3 × 5), read as 840 = 28 × 30. Then three further questions on the same number, each answerable by inspection alone — is 2 × 7 a factor? is 2 × 2 × 2? is 3 × 3 × 3? Two of the three are settled by what the factorisation contains; the third by what it does not.
  • 225 (Part II, §3.1, p.51). Checked against the printed page. Its division ladder is printed in the right margin: 5 | 225, 5 | 45, 3 | 9, 3 | 3, ending at 1 — so 225 = 5 × 5 × 3 × 3. The enumeration the book then runs, in its own order: the primes themselves, 3 and 5; two at a time, 3 × 3, 5 × 5 and 3 × 5; three at a time, 3 × 3 × 5 and 3 × 5 × 5; four at a time, 3 × 3 × 5 × 5. Then 1 is added to the list. The book prints the finished list of nine and asks the reader to check that nothing is missing.
  • The five numbers to enumerate (Part II, §3.1, "Figure it Out", p.51). 90, 105, 132, 360 and 840. Their factorisations, as inputs: 90 = 2 × 3 × 3 × 5; 105 = 3 × 5 × 7; 132 = 2 × 2 × 3 × 11; 360 = 2 × 2 × 2 × 3 × 3 × 5; 840 = 2 × 2 × 2 × 3 × 5 × 7. The book supplies two of the counts itself — it says 360 has 24 factors and 840 has 32 — and supplies no others. Those two printed counts are worth using as a check on an added enumeration: a movement that lands on a different number for 360 or 840 has a bug.
  • Anshu's claim (Part II, §3.1, p.51). The claim, paraphrased: the bigger the number, the longer its prime factorisation. The book's two numbers: 96 = 2 × 2 × 2 × 2 × 2 × 3 and 121 = 11 × 11.
  • The side box on p.52 (Part II, §3.1). Checked against the printed page. A pale blue panel with a small owl-in-a-mortarboard character at its left. Its content is the naming of conjecture and the naming of the killing move as a counterexample. It is set as an aside, not as a step of the argument.

Figures to have open

  • A row of prime factors that can be bracketed and re-bracketed, and from which subparts can be lifted out. Standard schematic; this is the single most important visual in the topic.
  • The 225 division ladder, redrawn. Standard schematic — do not lift the book's margin art.
  • A selection grid for 225: rows for "how many primes taken", cells for each distinct product. Standard schematic; the book prints the same information as running text, not as a table.
  • No numbered figure exists to cite: this chapter prints no "Fig. 3.x" label anywhere on pp.47–66 (all twenty pages checked).

Where this sits in the book

  • NCERT Ganita Prakash, Class 7, Part II, printed Chapter 3 "Finding Common Ground", §3.1 "The Greatest of All", "Factors of a Number Using Prime Factorisation", pp.50–51 — the 840 regrouping, the three test questions, and the 225 enumeration
  • Same section, "Figure it Out", Part II, p.51 — the five numbers to enumerate, Anshu's claim, and the counterexample — none of it runs on to the next page, which opens with the side box
  • Same section, the side box naming conjecture and counterexample, Part II, p.52
  • Same chapter, SUMMARY, Part II, p.65, bullet 3
  • Backward pointer: Breaking a number down to primes, and why the result is unique, whose result this topic depends on
  • Forward pointer: HCF: take the fewest occurrences of each prime, which applies the same cut to two factorisations at once

The book

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