Maths Olympiad Prep

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Number theory Difficulty 2.6 Junior Find the answer

Which of the following integers cannot be written as a product of two integers, each greater than 1: 6, 27, 53, 39, 77?

A number or a short expression. Fractions can be typed as 3/2, and spacing doesn't matter.

Solution

We note that 6=2imes36=2 imes 3 and 27=3imes927=3 imes 9 and 39=3imes1339=3 imes 13 and 77=7imes1177=7 imes 11, which means that each of 6,27,396,27,39, and 77 can be written as the product of two integers, each greater than 1. Thus, 53 must be the integer that cannot be written in this way. We can check that 53 is indeed a prime number.

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