The first step a math tutor would suggest 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:
48 x 48 x 48 x 48 x ... (for a total of 52 times) = 2657934923486999665255219137427226096303047074484677382289612932898524748142652944285696
Therefore, 48 to the power of 52 is 2657934923486999665255219137427226096303047074484677382289612932898524748142652944285696.