Euler in Babylon

Highly divisible triangular number

March 08, 2002

The sequence of triangle numbers is generated by adding the natural numbers. So the 7th triangle number would be 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 + 6 + 7 = 28. The first ten terms would be:

1, 3, 6, 10, 15, 21, 28, 36, 45, 55, ...

Let us list the factors of the first seven triangle numbers:

 1: 1 3: 1,3 6: 1,2,3,610: 1,2,5,1015: 1,3,5,1521: 1,3,7,2128: 1,2,4,7,14,28

We can see that 28 is the first triangle number to have over five divisors.

What is the value of the first triangle number to have over five hundred divisors?


gamwe6

Written by gamwe6 who lives and works in San Francisco building useful things. You should follow him on Twitter