text: The exponent is usually shown as a superscript to the right of the base. In that case,  is called "b raised to the nth power", "b (raised) to the power of n", "the nth power of b", "b to the nth power", or most briefly as "b to the n(th)".
  Starting from the basic fact stated above that, for any positive integer ,  is  occurrences of  all multiplied by each other, several other properties of exponentiation directly follow. In particular:
  In other words, when multiplying a base raised to one exponent by the same base raised to another exponent, the exponents add. From this basic rule that exponents add, we can derive that  must be equal to 1 for any , as follows. For any , . Dividing both sides by  gives .
  The fact that  can similarly be derived from the same rule. For example, . Taking the cube root of both sides gives .
  The rule that multiplying makes exponents add can also be used to derive the properties of negative integer exponents. Consider the question of what  should mean. In order to respect the "exponents add" rule, it must be the case that . Dividing both sides by  gives , which can be more simply written as , using the result from above that . By a similar argument, .