A teacher is making identical packages of pencil and erasers.He has 72 pencils and 24 erasers,and he plans to use all the pencils and eraser.

Question

a)What is the greatest possible number of identical packag?

b)How manhã pencils will be in the package?

Answer 1

Factors are numbers you can multiply together to get another number. Factors are either composite numbers or prime numbers (except that 0 and 1 are neither prime nor composite).
Example:
  2 and 3 are factors of 6, because 2 × 3 = 6
  1 and 6 are also factors of 6 because 1 x 6 = 6
  1, 2, 3, 6 are all factors of the number 6

 

The number of packages must be a factor of 72 and a factor of 24.

The number of pencils in each package must be a factor of 72 and a factor of 24.

The number of erasers in each package must be a factor of 72 and a factor of 24.

 

The factors of 72 are:   1  2  3  4   6   8   9   12   18   24   36    72

The factors of 24 are:   1   2   3   4   6   8   12    24

 

a)What is the greatest possible number of identical package? 

b)How many pencils will be in each package?

 The largest number in both lists is 24.

  There may be 24 packages, each with 3 pencils and 1 eraser.