Solution: The GCF of 30 and 3 is 3
Methods
How to find the GCF of 30 and 3 using Prime Factorization
One way to find the GCF of 30 and 3 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 30?
What are the Factors of 3?
Here is the prime factorization of 30:
2
1
×
3
1
×
5
1
2^1 × 3^1 × 5^1
2 1 × 3 1 × 5 1
And this is the prime factorization of 3:
3
1
3^1
3 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 30 and 3 by multiplying all the matching prime factors to get a GCF of 30 and 3 as 9:
Thus, the GCF of 30 and 3 is: 9
How to Find the GCF of 30 and 3 by Listing All Common Factors
The first step to this method of finding the Greatest Common Factor of 30 and 3 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, 30 and 3:
Factors of 30: 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 10, 15, 30
Factors of 3: 1, 3
When you compare the two lists of factors, you can see that the common factor(s) are 1, 3. Since 3 is the largest of these common factors, the GCF of 30 and 3 would be 3.
Find the GCF of Other Number Pairs
Want more practice? Try some of these other GCF problems:
What is the GCF of 67 and 100?
What is the GCF of 18 and 87?
What is the GCF of 69 and 101?
What is the GCF of 96 and 63?
What is the GCF of 146 and 34?