In a school there are two sections – section A and section B of class X. There are 32 students in section A and 36 students in section B. Determine the minimum number of books required for their class library so that they can be distributed equally among students of section A or section B.

To find the minimum number of books that can be equally distributed among:

32 students in section A
36 students in section B
This means we are looking for the Least Common Multiple (LCM) of 32 and 36.

Step 1: Prime Factorization

32 = 2⁵
36 = 2² × 3²

Step 2: Find LCM

LCM takes the highest powers of all prime factors involved:
LCM = 2⁵ × 3² = 32 × 9 = 288

Hence answer is 288 books