Understand How to Work Out the Volume of Cubes and Cuboids

In this activity, we're going to be learning how to calculate the volume of cubes and cuboids.

We use the following formulae to work out the volumes of these shapes:

Volume of a cube/cuboid = length × width × height

Volume of a Cube

We only need to know the length of one side because this is a cube (the length, the width and the height will be equal).

Cuboid

We need to know the length, the width and the height.

Let's have a go:

Example

Calculate the volume of this cuboid in cm³

Answer

The length is 15 cm, the width is 4 cm and the height is 8 cm.

Volume of cuboid = length × width × height = 15 × 4 × 8 = 60 × 8 = 480 cm³

Example 2

Calculate the volume of this cube in cm³

Answer

The side length is 7 cm, so the width and the height are also 7 cm.

Volume of cube = side length × side length × side length = 7 × 7 × 7 = 343 cm³

Top Tip:  Check the unit of measure carefully in each of the following questions!

Let's try some questions now.