What are the Factors of 3?

So, what are the factors of 3?

• Factors of 3: 1, 3

• Sum of Factors of 3: 4

• Negative Factors of 3: -1, -3

• Prime Factors of 3: 1, 3

• Prime Factorization of 3: 3

There are two ways to find the factors of 3: using factor pairs and using prime factorization.

Factor pairs of 3 are any two numbers that, when multiplied together, equal 3. The question to ask is “what two numbers multiplied together equal 3?” Every factor can be paired with another factor and multiplying the two will result in 3.

In this case, we can see that 3 is a prime number. By definition, a prime number is a number that doesn’t have any other factors other than itself and 1.

So, 3 only has one factor pair:

(1, 3)

If you also consider negative factors, there is also a second factor pair:

(-1, -3)

Prime factorization is when you break down the factors of 3 to just the prime factors and expressing 3 as a product of those prime factors.

In this case, because 3 is a prime number, we can simply state the primary factorization as 3.

For most numbers, we would take the smallest prime factor that is larger than 1 to start to break down the focus number. In this case, the smallest prime factor larger than 1 is 3.

3 ÷ 3 = 1

If we divide 3 by 3, we simply get 1, which can’t be broken down any further.

So, the prime factorization of 3 is just 3.

Practice your factoring skills by exploring how to factor other numbers, like the ones below:

Factors of 50 - The factors of 50 are 1, 2, 5, 10, 25, 50

Factors of 81 - The factors of 81 are 1, 3, 9, 27, 81

Factors of 34 - The factors of 34 are 1, 2, 17, 34

Factors of 26 - The factors of 26 are 1, 2, 13, 26