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What Are Powers?

A power consists of a base and an exponent, and is used to write multiplication in an easier way. If you multiply a number by itself multiple times, it can be written as a power.

Theory

Powers

A power is an expression

a^{b} = \underset{b times}{\underset{︸}{a \times a \times \dots \times a}},

where $a$ is the called the base, and $b$ is the exponent.

The base $a$ is the number that you multiply by itself, and $b$ is how many times you are multiplying by $a$ .

Example 1

Write 3 multiplied by itself 4 times as a power

3 \times 3 \times 3 \times 3 = 3^{4}

Example 2

Write the number 25 as a power with 5 as a base

25 = 5 \times 5 = 5^{2}

Note! If the exponent is equal to 0, the power is always 1, for all bases apart from 0.

Example 3

Power

Calculate $5^{0}$ and $10 0^{0}$

$\begin{array}{l} 5^{0} = 1 \\ 10 0^{0} = 1 \end{array}$

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