When we raise 1010 to a power, the power tells us the number of zeroes in the answer: 10510 5 ==100000100000 In your own words, explain why this happens.

When we raise 10 to a power, the power indeed tells us the number of zeroes in the answer. This happens because of the way multiplication works.

When we say 10 to the power of 5, what we're really doing is multiplying 10 by itself 5 times (1010101010).

In the decimal number system, each time we multiply a number by 10, we effectively "shift" that number one place to the left, adding a zero at the end. This is because 10 is the base of our number system.

So, when we multiply 10 by 10, we get 100 (which has two zeroes). If we multiply 100 by 10, we get 1000 (which has three zeroes), and so on.

Therefore, the number of times we multiply 10 by itself (i.e., the power to which we raise 10) directly corresponds to the number of zeroes in the resulting number.