A reader asked us the following question:
Zero is prime number.
Hi,
This is Maida Ijaz from Educative.
According to the definition of prime numbers:
“A number which has only two factors, i.e, one and itself, is called a prime number.”
For example: 2, 5,7, etc.
From the given definition, it can be seen that zero is not a prime number because of the following reasons:
1- As you know, if we divide 2 by 4 we will not get an integer as 2 is smaller than 4. So in this concept, though, we write 0/1= 0, but 0 is less than 1. So 1 can not be the factor of 0.
2- 0/0 is not possible as it is indeterminate.
3- Also, zero does not meet the first criteria of the definition. Zero can be divided by any number, and the answer is always zero.