The first step is to understand what it means when a number has an exponent. The “power” of a number indicates how many times the base would be multiplied by itself to reach the correct value.
The second step is to write the number in the base-exponent form, and lastly calculate what the final result would be. Consider the example of 2 to the power of 4: in exponent form that would be
So re-applying these steps to our particular problem, we first convert our word problem to a base-exponent form of:
To simplify this, all that is needed is to multiply it out:
17 x 17 x 17 x 17 x ... (for a total of 100 times) = 1108899372780783641306111715875094966436017167649879524402769841278887580501366697712424694256005093589248451503068397608001
Therefore, 17 to the power of 100 is 1108899372780783641306111715875094966436017167649879524402769841278887580501366697712424694256005093589248451503068397608001.