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:
71 x 71 x 71 x 71 x ... (for a total of 54 times) = 9288612186912875874667186338493330758034069235896125119733172570190281306549755820106670707143297681
Therefore, 71 to the power of 54 is 9288612186912875874667186338493330758034069235896125119733172570190281306549755820106670707143297681.