Composite or Prime Number calculator determines whether a number is prime or composite. If it is composite the calculator finds all of the factors of the composite number using the prime factorization. This calculator is closely connected with the prime factors of a number calculator.
It is necessary to follow the next steps:
A prime number is a natural number greater than `1` that has exactly two factors, `1` and itself. Negative integers cannot be prime. A composite number is any positive integer that is not prime. Zero and 1 are neither prime nor composite numbers. For instance, `4, 6, 8, 9, 10, 12, 14`, etc are the examples of a composite number. In the table below, we manually check which number is prime
Natural numbers | Factors | Prime/Composite |
---|---|---|
1 | 1 | / |
2 | 1,2 | Prime |
3 | 1,3 | Prime |
4 | 1,2,4 | Composite |
5 | 1,5 | Prime |
6 | 1,2,3,6 | Composite |
7 | 1,7 | Prime |
8 | 1,2,4,8 | Composite |
9 | 1,3,9 | Composite |
There are some methods for determining if a number $n$ is prime:
Prime numbers play an important role in cryptography. All integer numbers (except 0 and 1) are made up of primes. RSA (Rivest-Shamir-Adleman) is one of the first public-key
cryptosystems and it is widely used for secure information. RSA is one of the basic cryptographic algorithms. Basically, a public key consists of a product of two large primes used to encrypt
a message and a secret key consists of those two primes used to decrypt the message (for more, refer to (cryptosystem)).
In nature, the prime numbers are widespread. For instance, cicadas have reproductive cycles that are $13$ or $17$ years long. The reason is to minimize the frequency with which their reproduction coincides with another organism. These other organisms may be, for example, predators or competitors for the same food which would be at a premium when
reproducing.
Practice Problem 1:
Determine whether the number `391` is prime or composite.
Practice Problem 2:
A group of $137$ children is on the soccer camp. The children will be arranged in rows with the same number of children in each row. Is it possible?
Practice Problem 3:
Find two prime numbers `A` and $B$ less than `60`, if the arithmetic mean of these numbers is also a prime number.
The prime number calculator, methods, example calculation and practice problems would be very useful for grade school students of K-12 education to learn how to determine whether the given number is prime or composite. Users can use this concept in number theory problems as well as in computer science.