Write 144 as a product of its prime factors

To do this, we draw a prime factor tree (whiteboard). The easiest way is to keep dividing by 2 (which is a prime number) until we get an odd number. 144/2 = 72 and 72/2 = 36 and 36/2 = 18 and 18/2 = 9 which is odd so we stop for now. So far we have 144 = 9 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 because we divided by 2 four times and ended up with 9. Here we can divide 9 by 3 as 3 is a prime number. 9/3 = 3 therefore we stop because 3 is prime. Therefore, 144 = 3 x 3 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 = 3^2 x 2^4 is the product of prime factors