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:
47 x 47 x 47 x 47 x ... (for a total of 73 times) = 115649465336407140836869583816852783960709438327265501078121678424836355863123493955885628655390228306037226425936575031727
Therefore, 47 to the power of 73 is 115649465336407140836869583816852783960709438327265501078121678424836355863123493955885628655390228306037226425936575031727.