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:
89 x 89 x 89 x 89 x ... (for a total of 42 times) = 7488249032982960608606585095904734981347282237297075167277004918963148603698150321
Therefore, 89 to the power of 42 is 7488249032982960608606585095904734981347282237297075167277004918963148603698150321.