Divisors of a number are simply the numbers you can divide that number by, and get a whole number, without any fractions or decimals left over. For example, if you have the number 14, for each divisor of 14, dividing 14 by that divisor should give you a whole number. Understanding divisors helps us in various areas of math, including simplifying fractions and finding factors for various math problems. In this article, we will look at the divisors of the number 7.
To understand divisors better, we first need to learn about division. When we divide a number, we have three important terms:
- Dividend – This is the number we want to divide.
- Divisor – This is the number we are dividing by.
- Quotient – This is the result we get when we divide the dividend by the divisor.
Let’s take an example using the number 7:
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If we want to divide 7 by 1, we write it as:
7 / 1 = 7
Here, 7 is the dividend, 1 is the divisor, and 7 is the quotient.
Now, let’s calculate the divisors of the number 7. To do this, we will divide 7 by every integer starting from 1 up to 7 itself and see which ones give us whole numbers.
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Start with 1:
- 7 / 1 = 7 (whole number)
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Move to 2:
- 7 / 2 = 3.5 (not a whole number)
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Next, try 3:
- 7 / 3 = 2.33 (not a whole number)
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Now try 4:
- 7 / 4 = 1.75 (not a whole number)
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Next is 5:
- 7 / 5 = 1.4 (not a whole number)
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Then try 6:
- 7 / 6 = 1.16 (not a whole number)
- Finally, divide by 7:
- 7 / 7 = 1 (whole number)
To summarize the calculations so far:
- 7 / 1 = 7
- 7 / 2 = 3.5
- 7 / 3 = 2.33
- 7 / 4 = 1.75
- 7 / 5 = 1.4
- 7 / 6 = 1.16
- 7 / 7 = 1
From the calculations, we see that the divisors of 7 are the numbers that produced a whole number as a quotient: 1 and 7.
In conclusion, the complete list of divisors for the number 7 is:
- 1
- 7
These are the only two numbers that can divide 7 without leaving any remainder. Understanding these specific numbers helps in a lot of calculations and simplifies many problems we may encounter in math.