What is the least common multiple of 16 and 42?
Least Common Multiple Calculator
Here you can find answers to questions like: What is the least common multiple of 16 and 42? or What is the LCM of 16 and 42?
Use this calculator to find the Least Common Multiple (LCM) for up to 3 mumbers.
How to find the Least Common Multiple (LCM)
Definition
The least common multiple (LCM) of a set of numbers is the lowest positive number that is a multiple of every number in that set.
Supose you want to find the Least Common Multiple (LCM) for 6 and 8, notation LCM(6,8):
The LCM of 6 and 8 is 24 because 24 is the smallest number that is both a multiple of 6 and a multiple of 8. This calculator uses the listing multiples method. This method consisits of writing out a list of the lowest multiples of each number, and look for the lowest multiple both numbers have in common. In this example we have:
- Multiples of 6: 6, 12, 18, 24. Note that 6 = 6 x 1, 12 = 6 x 2, 18 = 6 x 3, 24 = 6 x 4, 30 = 6 x 5
- Multiples of 8: 8, 16, 24. Also note that 8 = 8 x1, 16 = 8 x 2, 24 = 8 x 3, 32 = 8 x 4, ...
The LCM is also known as:
- lowest common multiple
- smallest common multiple