The factors of a number are those numbers that divide exactly into it. So, for example, the factors of 4 are 4, 2, and 1. So let’s now go through how we find the factors of 48…
Finding the factors of 48
Two factors of any number are always 1 and the number itself, so in this case 1 and 48 are factors.
And for any even number, 2 is always a factor as well.
So that gives us 1, 2 and 48 as initial factors.
To find the other factors of 48:
Divide by 2
First divide 48 by 2 which gives 24, so 24 is also a factor.
Now divide 24 by 2 which gives 12, so is also a factor.
Next divide 12 by 2 which gives 6, which means 6 is a factor too.
Now divide 6 by 2 which gives 3, and so 3 is another factor.
If we now try and divide 3 by 2, the result isn’t an integer so we can stop dividing by 2 here.
Divide by 3
Now we check if our original number is also divisible by 3. In this case it is: 48 / 3 = 16.
So 16 is also a factor of 48.
Now divide 16 by 2. This gives 8 which is also a factor.
And 8 divided by 2 is 4, so 4 must also be a factor.
4 divided by 2 is 2, but we already have 2 as a factor, so we are done dividing by 3.
If we now try dividing 48 by 4, we find our first result is 12. But we already found 12 as a factor previously, so we are all done now.
We now have all our factors of 48.
All the factors of 48
Putting our results together, we get:
The factors of 48 are 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 12, 16, 24 and 48.