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:
39 x 39 x 39 x 39 x ... (for a total of 74 times) = 5480004561173402265489191075566268029776663526722690731386880943682846487339521693648466039026416689019321651320542641
Therefore, 39 to the power of 74 is 5480004561173402265489191075566268029776663526722690731386880943682846487339521693648466039026416689019321651320542641.