Solution: The GCF of 40 and 3 is 1
Methods
How to find the GCF of 40 and 3 using Prime Factorization
One way to find the GCF of 40 and 3 is to compare the prime factorization of each number. To find the prime factorization, you can follow the instructions for each number here:
What are the Factors of 40?
What are the Factors of 3?
Here is the prime factorization of 40:
2
3
×
5
1
2^3 × 5^1
2 3 × 5 1
And this is the prime factorization of 3:
3
1
3^1
3 1
When you compare the prime factorization of these two numbers, you can see that there are no matching prime factors. When this is the case, it means that there are no common factors between these two numbers. As a result, the GCF of 40 and 3 is 1.
Thus, the GCF of 40 and 3 is: 1
How to Find the GCF of 40 and 3 by Listing All Common Factors
The first step to this method of finding the Greatest Common Factor of 40 and 3 is to find and list all the factors of each number. Again, you can see how this is done by looking at the “Factors of” articles that are linked to above.
Let’s take a look at the factors for each of these numbers, 40 and 3:
Factors of 40: 1, 2, 4, 5, 8, 10, 20, 40
Factors of 3: 1, 3
When you compare the two lists of factors, you can see that the only common factor is 1. So, in this case, the GCF of 40 and 3 is 1.
Find the GCF of Other Number Pairs
Want more practice? Try some of these other GCF problems:
What is the GCF of 27 and 109?
What is the GCF of 80 and 76?
What is the GCF of 96 and 56?
What is the GCF of 20 and 33?
What is the GCF of 61 and 75?