Is there a greatest common factor (GCF) between all of the terms in the given expression? If so, you should factor that out first.
2(8-m^2)
Practice makes perfect
The greatest common factor (GCF) of an expression is a common factor of the terms in the expression. It is the common factor with the greatest coefficient and the greatest exponent. The GCF of the given expression is 2.
Looking at the expression 8-m^2, we can see that we could use the formula for factoring the difference of two squares
a^2 -b^2 =(a+b)(a-b)
However, 8 is not a perfect square, so let's finish factoring the expression here.
Extra
Continuation
In case you would like to see how to factor the given expression further, we included the process below.
