Prime factor of 300 000 000 000?

Question

I need to find out the prime factors of over 300 billion. I have a function that is adding to the list of them...very slowly! It has been running for about an hour now and i

Answer 1

The key to understanding why the square root is important, consider that each factor of n below the square root of n has a corresponding factor above it. To see this, consider that if x is factor of n, then x/n = m which means that x/m = n, hence m is also a factor.