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 81 times) = 15154451684337032471180877896715528289578404766894843944101258135758218479588478910835485639300034416425654688319551372515107152957800448
Therefore, 48 to the power of 81 is 15154451684337032471180877896715528289578404766894843944101258135758218479588478910835485639300034416425654688319551372515107152957800448.