Most people are probably familiar with raising numbers to the power of 2 or 3, for example 52 = 5 ✕ 5 = 25 and 43 = 4 ✕ 4 ✕ 4 = 64. You can raise a number to any exponent* although in many cases the meaning isn't obvious. Of course the number of possible exponents is infinite so I won't attempt to cover them all but in this article I'll look at and explain a few of the more useful ones.