Math Hacks for Scratch

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Splitting Numbers with Prime Factorization

Prime numbers are like the chemical elements of the world of positive integers. They’re basic building blocks that can be used to produce other positive integers.

The science of chemistry teaches us that a few substances, the elements, make up everything in the world. Atoms of elements combine to make other substances called compounds, but an element’s atoms can’t be split apart without losing their physical properties. Similarly, we can combine prime numbers (through multiplication) to make any composite number we might want, and prime numbers can’t be divided any further, since a prime number’s only ...