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:
86 x 86 x 86 x 86 x ... (for a total of 81 times) = 4947371816726797156878105092759425248432430080860632186952421567214104975436686013010508779313238268164420414950152978011809398888983887601037792904149467136
Therefore, 86 to the power of 81 is 4947371816726797156878105092759425248432430080860632186952421567214104975436686013010508779313238268164420414950152978011809398888983887601037792904149467136.

