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:
86 x 86 x 86 x 86 x ... (for a total of 97 times) = 44294496627116486279374596383432245288477948362551742092166007561577706590579539439736257808069372235784239189961191296760562566117044222453371594105925291482492023398014011377105917444096
Therefore, 86 to the power of 97 is 44294496627116486279374596383432245288477948362551742092166007561577706590579539439736257808069372235784239189961191296760562566117044222453371594105925291482492023398014011377105917444096.
