An Overview of Prime Numbers Definition by example: A number which is a positive integer divisible by no positive integers other than one

and itself is called a Prime Number. It is generally called as a prime integer or simply a prime. To explain the definition of Prime Numbers a little further, we can look into an example. Let us take a number 20. This positive integer is divisible by the following divisors, 1, 2, 4, 5, 10 and 20. That simply means 20 is divisible by numbers other than 1 and 20 itself. Let us now take another number 13. The positive integer is divisible by, 1 and 13. This means that 13 is a Prime Number. This simple example must have answered your basic question, What is a Prime Number? Now how we would call the positive integers other than Prime Numbers? Such numbers are called as Composite Numbers. Even Prime and Odd Prime: Now, you might seem a little puzzled about the number 1. To give clarity on that puzzle, the number 1 is neither considered prime nor considered composite. Its very evident from the List of Prime Numbers that you cant notice 1 and that is why the list starts from 2. It will be pretty interesting if you look at Prime Number List. The interesting fact is that 2 is the only even number among all Prime Numbers and hence it is called as an even prime. All Prime Numbers excluding 2 are called as odd primes. Primes as basic building blocks of natural numbers: Before proceeding to this section try to recollect, What are Prime Numbers. Alright, as mentioned in the heading of this section, Prime Numbers are considered as the building blocks of natural numbers because according to the Fundamental Theorem of Arithmetic, any positive integer larger than one can be written as a product of one or more Prime Numbers. This leads us to learn a concept called Prime Factorization. It is simply the concept used to write a number as a product of Prime Numbers. Applications of Prime Numbers: The applications of Prime Numbers are beyond the scope of this article but to give a general understanding these are discussed here. The primary application of Prime Numbers is that they are used as the basis for the creation of public key cryptography algorithms. Other than that, they are used in hash tables, pseudo-random number generators, rotors in motors etc.