• Question: What’s so weird about prime numbers

    Asked by anon-186283 to Danny, Trystan, Catherine on 11 Nov 2018.
    • Photo: Danny Ward

      Danny Ward answered on 11 Nov 2018:

      A prime number is a number which cannot be formed by multiplying two smaller whole numbers above 1. An example is 11…You can’t get to it by multiplying any two whole numbers together bigger than 1.
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      What is really interesting is that there are an infinite amount of prime numbers, no matter how big the number it can still be a prime number if it followed the right pattern.

    • Photo: Trystan Leng

      Trystan Leng answered on 12 Nov 2018:

      Prime numbers can only be divided by themselves and the number 1. By multiplying prime numbers together, you can create any other numbers. Prime numbers are in maths what elements are in Chemistry – the building blocks of everything else!

      What is really interesting about prime numbers is they pop up everywhere in nature! For example, there are two species of cicada, a type of bug, whose life-cycles are 13 and 17 years, only surfacing for a few weeks then. These are both prime numbers, and this is no coincidence! By being these numbers, their life cycle only overlaps every 221 years! If they weren’t prime numbers they would overlap much more often.

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