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Powers, a la Shmoop. Sometimes, the greatest power comes in the

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smallest packages. Take David, for example. Goliath never even

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knew what hit him. How about Napoleon? He certainly didn’t

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win any battles because of his height. And then there’s Stewie Griffin. He’s

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barely a foot tall and yet he has already mastered time travel.

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There’s a reason we have something in math called a “power.”

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It’s small and unassuming, but it packs quite a punch.

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Also referred to as an “exponent,” a power is a way of abbreviating very large numbers

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in order to make them more manageable. But while they may not look that important,

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don’t be fooled. An exponent can take an expression like 5

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times 5 times 5 times 5, and express it this way:

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We are multiplying four 5’s together, so our exponent is the number 4.

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Or, as we might say, we are taking 5 to the fourth power.

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As you can imagine, you might have many more numbers to multiply together than just four

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of them.

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Do you really want to write out numbers the long way?

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We didn’t think so.

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What about when the power is 1? Because our exponent is telling us that there

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is only one seven, he doesn’t get to be multiplied by anything else.

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So it’s the same as plain ol’ seven. When a power is zero, however, the number

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is always equal to one. An exponent can also be negative.

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In that case, you will need to take the reciprocal of the number…

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…and then change the exponent to a positive number.

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So, as you can see, they may not look like much, but they are “powerful.”

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They can abbreviate many big numbers…

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…and they can reduce others to rubble. Have fun on your power trip. Send us a postcard.

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