Exponentiation
Exponentiation is a mathematical operation, written as , involving two numbers, the "base" and the "exponent" . When is a positive integer, exponentiation corresponds to repeated multiplication of the base: that is, is the product of multiplying bases:
Exponential growth
Since the time variable, which is the input to this function, occurs as the exponent, this is an exponential function. This contrasts with growth based on a power function, where the time variable is the base value raised to a fixed exponent, such as cubic growth (or in general terms denoted as polynomial growth).A quantity "x" depends exponentially on time "t" if