Math Tutor Explains: What is 87 to the Power of 54?

A math tutor would explain that to solve for 87 to the power of 54, we must first understand the structure. The number 87 is called the base, and the number 54 is called the exponent. In short, the base must be multiplied by itself the number of times as the exponent. Let’s look at this problem in more detail.

Math Tutor's Solution: 87 to the Power of 54 is equal to 542050365259193112388472922442458605375993009634289838375725400141670695116239816378923604010947503709489

Methods

Step-by-step from math tutor: finding 87 to the power of 54

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

242^4
. To solve this, we need to multiply the base, 2 by itself, 4 times -
2⋅2⋅2⋅22\cdot2\cdot2\cdot2
= 16. So
24=162^4 = 16
.

So re-applying these steps to our particular problem, we first convert our word problem to a base-exponent form of:

875487^{54}

To simplify this, all that is needed is to multiply it out:

87 x 87 x 87 x 87 x ... (for a total of 54 times) = 542050365259193112388472922442458605375993009634289838375725400141670695116239816378923604010947503709489

Therefore, 87 to the power of 54 is 542050365259193112388472922442458605375993009634289838375725400141670695116239816378923604010947503709489.

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