Prime Number Spirals
A prime number is any positive integer (whole number) that cannot be divided by any number except 1 and itself. 2 is prime, so is 3, 5, 7, but 9 is not – it can be divided by 3. No even number can be prime either as they all divide by 2. Prime numbers are interesting (from a mathematician's point of view) because there is no formula for working out when they occur. Also cryptography (and thus ecommerce) depend large prime numbers.
Looking for patterns which might predict primes is what makes it interesting though Mathematicians have been looking for a very long time. You can use computers to calculate very large primes by a form of brute force- trying lots of combinations- and there is an ongoing Internet based search called the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search at Mersenne.org.
The Riemann hypothesis which is related to the distribution of primes is still unsolved and there is a $1,000,000 prize for its solution though you will need to be very good (ie a professional mathematician) at maths to solve it.
NumberSpiral.com is the work of Robert Sacks and shows numbers plotted in spirals- he provides a free program to download (Windows only) to do the plotting.
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Posted: May 10th, 2010 under default.
Tags: prime number spiral
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