What is 10² = 100?

10² means 10 times 10, and it equals 100.

Imagine you have a toy box that’s 10 blocks long and 10 blocks wide, like a square grid of blocks. If you count all the blocks inside, there are 100 blocks in total! That’s what happens when you multiply 10 by itself.

• Multiplying is just a faster way of adding.
• So instead of saying 10 + 10 + 10 + 10 + 10 + 10 + 10 + 10 + 10 + 10, you can say 10 × 10 or 10².

It’s like having 10 rows of 10 cookies each, when you put them all together, you get a big plate with 100 cookies!

You might also think of it as squares in real life: a square room that's 10 feet long and 10 feet wide has an area of 100 square feet. That’s the same idea, just bigger!