Question

Find the greatest common factor of these two expressions.
14w5y8x2 and 7w6x2

Answer 1

`7w^(5)x^(2)`

Explanation:

We can start by looking at each variable and and constant separately. In the first one, the constant part is 14 and in the second its 7. We can notice that the GCF of these two is 7. Next we have the part with w. The first one is w^5 while the second is w^6. We can notice that we can factor w^5 out of both, so it is the GCF. We can notice that only the first one has a y, so we can ignore it since it is not in common with both expressions. Lastly, we have x: the first has x^2 and the second has x^2 as well. They are the same, so the GCF would just be x^2.

Now, we can multiply the results together to get the GCF of the whole expressions:

7 * w^5 * x^2 =
`7w^(5)x^(2)`