Solution: The GCF of 50 and 20 is 10
Methods
How to find the GCF of 50 and 20 using Prime Factorization
One way to find the GCF of 50 and 20 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 50?
What are the Factors of 20?
Here is the prime factorization of 50:
2
1
×
5
2
2^1 × 5^2
2 1 × 5 2
And this is the prime factorization of 20:
2
2
×
5
1
2^2 × 5^1
2 2 × 5 1
When you compare the prime factorization of these two numbers, you can see that there are matching prime factors. You can now find the Greatest Common Factor of 50 and 20 by multiplying all the matching prime factors to get a GCF of 50 and 20 as 100:
Thus, the GCF of 50 and 20 is: 100
How to Find the GCF of 50 and 20 by Listing All Common Factors
The first step to this method of finding the Greatest Common Factor of 50 and 20 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, 50 and 20:
Factors of 50: 1, 2, 5, 10, 25, 50
Factors of 20: 1, 2, 4, 5, 10, 20
When you compare the two lists of factors, you can see that the common factor(s) are 1, 2, 5, 10. Since 10 is the largest of these common factors, the GCF of 50 and 20 would be 10.
Find the GCF of Other Number Pairs
Want more practice? Try some of these other GCF problems:
What is the GCF of 147 and 40?
What is the GCF of 1 and 16?
What is the GCF of 19 and 18?
What is the GCF of 141 and 98?
What is the GCF of 137 and 122?