Prime number

High school (ages 12+)
Mathematics & Numbers

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Date:

Step 1 · Read the article

Open the article and read it at the level above. Then answer the questions below in your own words.

https://smallwhale.org/articles/prime-number

Write what each word means, using the article.

Do not copy the article. Write two things you learned, the way you would explain them to a friend.

Answers below are taken from the article’s stored facts, so they match what the student read.

1. What is the infinitude of primes?Proven by Euclid, there is an infinite number of prime numbers
2. Why is 2 special among prime numbers?2 is the only even prime number. All other even numbers can be divided by 2, so they are not prime.
3. How do prime numbers help keep our online stuff safe?Prime numbers are used in RSA encryption, which keeps online transactions and messages secure. It’s hard to break RSA because finding the original primes from their product is very difficult.

Composite Number: An integer greater than 1 that is not prime, meaning it has more than two positive divisors.
Prime Factorization: The process of expressing a composite number as a product of its prime factors.
Semiprime: A natural number that is the product of two prime numbers (not necessarily distinct).
Mersenne Prime: A prime number that is one less than a power of two, i.e., of the form 2ⁿ − 1 for some integer n.