Math Tutor Explains: What are the Factors of 5?

As your math tutor, I’m here to guide you through the different types of factors of 5. So, what are the factors of 5?

• Factors of 5: 1, 5

• Sum of Factors of 5: 6

• Negative Factors of 5: -1, -5

• Prime Factors of 5: 1, 5

• Prime Factorization of 5: 5

There are two ways to find the factors of 5: using factor pairs and using prime factorization.

Factor pairs of 5 are any two numbers that, when multiplied together, equal 5. The question I would ask as a math tutor to guide you is: “what two numbers multiplied together equal 5?” Every factor can be paired with another factor and multiplying the two will result in 5.

In this case, we can see that 5 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, 5 only has one factor pair:

(1, 5)

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

(-1, -5)

Prime factorization is when you break down the factors of 5 to just the prime factors and expressing 5 as a product of those prime factors. Let’s go through the process and simplify it like a math tutor would!

In this case, because 5 is a prime number, we can simply state the primary factorization as 5.

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 5.

5 ÷ 5 = 1

If we divide 5 by 5, we simply get 1, which can’t be broken down any further.

So, the prime factorization of 5 is just 5.

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

Factors of 43 - The factors of 43 are 1, 43

Factors of 148 - The factors of 148 are 1, 2, 4, 37, 74, 148

Factors of 100 - The factors of 100 are 1, 2, 4, 5, 10, 20, 25, 50, 100

Factors of 96 - The factors of 96 are 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 12, 16, 24, 32, 48, 96