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
. To solve this, we need to multiply the base, 2 by itself, 4 times -
= 16. So
.
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:
59 x 59 x 59 x 59 x 59 = 714924299
Therefore, 59 to the power of 5 is 714924299.
