16 to the power of 2, written mathematically as 162, means that you multiply 16 by itself.
So, it looks like this:
16 x 16 = 256
This is a basic exponentiation calculation, where the exponent (in this case, 2) tells you how many times to use the base (which is 16) in a multiplication. Therefore, when you raise 16 to the power of 2, the result is 256.