The greatest common factor (GCF) of 16 and 40 is 8. This means that 8 is the largest possible number that divides both 16 and 40 exactly without any remainder. There are several methods to find the GCF of 16 and 40, including listing common factors, prime factorization, and using Euclids algorithm. When using the prime factorization method, the prime factorization of 16 is 2^4 and the prime factorization of 40 is 2^3 * 5. By comparing the prime factorization of these two numbers, it can be seen that they have common prime factors, and the GCF is found by multiplying all the matching prime factors, resulting in a GCF of 8.