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:
4 x 4 x 4 x 4 x ... (for a total of 87 times) = 23945242826029513411849172299223580994042798784118784
Therefore, 4 to the power of 87 is 23945242826029513411849172299223580994042798784118784.