PRIME NUMBERS

Grow like weeds among the

natural numbers, seeming to
obey no other law than that of
chance, but also exhibit
stunning regularity and that
there are laws governing their
behaviour, and that they obey
these laws with almost military
precision.
-Don Zagier
In 1975

Non Eco Section II

GROUP 1
Udantika Chandan
Rishabh Mukherji
Sahil Gosavi
Vrinda Arora
Tania Sharma

Harshiv Malik

What are Prime Numbers?

A prime number is a natural number greater than 1
that has no positive divisors other than 1 and itself.
For example: 5 is prime because 1 and 5 are its only positive integer factors.

Another way of saying this is that a prime number is

a positive integer that is not the product of two
smaller positive integers.

A Few facts about the Primes

The number 1 is not considered a prime number.

All even numbers greater than 2 are not prime numbers.
Prime numbers are infinite.
The lowest prime number is 2 and is also the only even
prime number.
The lowest odd prime number is 3.
The largest prime number known has around 13 million
digits!
The Greek mathematician Euclid studied prime numbers in
300BC

Numbers with more than two factors are called as

COMPOSITE NUMBERS. Numbers that

arent prime numbers are COMPOSITE
NUMBER

MISCONCEPTION is
that ODD NUMBERS are always
PRIME NUMBERS but thats not
A common

true.

Number Zero is another special Number. Zero

be a prime number because,

Every number is a factor of 0.

0 X 1 does equal 0, but

0 X anything at all = 0
However, Zero is not a composite number either

CAN NOT

Only 0 and 1 are neither prime nor

composite numbers.

All other whole numbers are either

prime or composite numbers.

Lets Discover Prime Numbers

Lets look at a number grid from 1 to 100 and see

how they were discovered.
We will be doing this exercise by the elimination
method.

Here Is How You Do It

First, we will take out
the number 1 because it
is not considered as a
Prime Number.

10

11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30
31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40
41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50
51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60
61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70
71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80
81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90
91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100

Here Is How You Do It

Now, we will take out
numbers that have a
composite factor of 2. In
other words, take out all the
even numbers

10

11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30
31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40
41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50
51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60
61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70
71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80
81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90

91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100

Here Is How You Do It

Now we will eliminate
numbers that have a
composite factor of 3

11

13

15

17

19

21

23

25

27

29

31

33

35

37

39

41

43

45

47

49

51

53

55

57

59

61

63

65

67

69

71

73

75

77

79

81

83

85

87

89

91

93

95

97

99

Here Is How You Do It

Now its time to take out
numbers that have a
composite factor of 5

2
11

3
13
23

31
41

37

55

73

49
59

67
77

85
95

19
29

47
65

83
91

25

43

61

7
17

35
53

71

79

89
97

Here Is How You Do It

Finally we take out numbers
that have a composite factor
of 7

2
11

3
13
23

31
41

37

55

73

49
59

67
77

85
95

19
29

47
65

83
91

25

43

61

7
17

35
53

71

79

89
97

Here Is How You Do It

And we have
these numbers
which are only
divisible by 1 or
itself. We call
these numbers
as Prime
Numbers

2
11

3
13

7
17

23
31
41

29
37

43

47

53
61
71

19

59
67

73

79

83

89
97