Factors of 36

Posted on15 April 2022

Introduction

At a large hardware store, it sells many different types of bathroom parts including shower stalls, toilets, and bathroom vanities. As you search for the right one, you realize that you will need to know the measurements of the place in your bathroom for the bathroom vanity. You can’t just place any bathroom vanity in that spot. So, you know that the area of the bathroom is 36 inches squared in area. What possibilities could there be based on the area?

Even though you still can’t pick any of the ones that are possibilities because it still must fit, you can at least narrow it down to these. See if you can use the factors of 36 to determine these possibilities.

The factors of a number like 36 are the numbers from one to the number, 36, that can evenly divide into it without having a remainder. Let’s look at a few. Of course, 1 and itself are factors. Two will be a factor too because 36 is an even number. Now, we need to find 2’s partner. It would be 18 because 2 times 18 equals 36. Below shows the other numbers from 1-36 that are factors of 36 because they evenly divide into 36 without having a remainder.

With 36, there are quite a few factors. These factors are 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 9, 12, 18, and 36. This means that your bathroom vanity could be 2 inches by 18 inches, 3 inches by 12 inches, 4 inches by 9 inches or 6 inches by 6 inches. However, some of those possibilities seem a little too thin. Most likely, the possibilities that seem reasonable would be the vanities that measure 4 by 9 or 6 by 6.