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:
96 x 96 x 96 x 96 x ... (for a total of 97 times) = 1906819588990348567735308061389850787971998997742538358462607199249367939785342564158104350485333234397260122903638439477683148101327233006598838401366093559419635646182294335918893949167599616
Therefore, 96 to the power of 97 is 1906819588990348567735308061389850787971998997742538358462607199249367939785342564158104350485333234397260122903638439477683148101327233006598838401366093559419635646182294335918893949167599616.