Why is my While loop infinite

Question

This while loop is giving me trouble as it simply will not stop, I'm trying to update elem to eventually be larger then char by using an exponent i but that simply doesn't happen and was wondering if there were any solutions.

i = 0
char = 20
elem = 2
while elem < char:
    elem**i
    i += 1

Answer 1

The problem is that you are not changing the value of elem, you are just repeatedly calculating elem**i, so when you compare elem to char it is always the same result. The simplest solution is to compare elem**i to char.

You probably meant:

while elem**i < char:
    i += 1

Answer 2

You are multiplying to a variable with zero value