What does the power of mean

To help us understand "to the power of", let's look at an example.

5 to the power of 2 or we can write it as 5^2, 2 being the exponent.

5^2 = 5 × 5 = 5 + 5 + 5 + 5 + 5 = 25

To the power of just means you are multiplying a number by itself for as many times as the exponent indicates.

~dasgupta/mathbook/append17dec2k8.pdf