Melissa's Page
Prime
Numbers
By: Melissa
Hello and welcome to this web page! While you
read I hope that you discover what you were looking for. First I will describe
for you a little bit about what prime numbers are. "Prime numbers are
an integer larger than one whose only positive divisors are one and itself."
A prime number can also be any number with two factors. Most often, prime
numbers are one and another number. Two numbers that are not prime, and
sometimes mistaken, are zero and one.
Prime numbers were first studied by the Greeks.
However, a man named Euclid was the inventor. Euclid came up with the fundamental
theorem of arithmetic. "It states that any positive integer greater
than one either is a prime or can be expressed as a product of primes that
is unique, except for the order in which the factors are listed." Prime
numbers were further discovered by Eratosthenes in 240 B.C. Greeks first
started noticing how many prime numbers there were in 300 B.C.
Many people are fascinated by how large prime
numbers can get. Here are some of the largest. In 1876, the largest prime
number found without the help of a modern computer was 276. This prime has
thirty-nine digits. In 1952, a computer was used to come up with a new larger
prime, 22,281. Next came 211,213 in 1963. This prime number had 3,376 digits.
Then, in 1971, 219,937 was discovered. This had 6,002 digits. Next in line,
a 6,533 digit prime was discovered in 1978. Finally, last but not least,
in 1979, a 13,395 digit prime was discovered.
Here are some interesting facts about prime numbers.
First of all, two is the only even prime. All evens higher than two are
divisible by two. Second, many primes come about in the number line in pairs.
For example, five and seven, twenty-nine and thirty-one, one hundred and
one and one hundred and three, etc. My last interesting fact is one that
I got out of the Encyclopedia Americana. "No rule has yet been found
to account for where prime numbers occur within the endless sequence of
the positive integers."
Well thank you for visiting my web page and I
hope you'll come again when you need information on prime numbers. Bye!
Sources:
www.mathpro.com/math/glassary/glossary.html#P
www.utm.edu/research/primes/largest.htm#intro
Houghton Mifflin: The Mathematics Experience
Academic American Encyclopedia
Ecyclopedia Americana
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