Volume

Mr. Cisneros Unit on Volume

Lesson 1

Introduction

What is volume?
Definition: The amount of space that a solid

object occupies (Wolfram MathWorld).

Notice that from the definition, volume applies to

solid objects or better yet, 3-dimensional shapes.

Examples include:
Cubes
Spheres
Cylinders, and more.

Review on Area

Definition: The amount of material needed to cover

a certain surface is called the area. (

Wolfram MathWorld)
Area applies to 2-dimensional objects. Examples

include:
Squares
Circles
Triangles, and more
So what does area have to do with volume?

Review on Area Cont.

The definition of area tells us that we are

working with a surface, and we know that a

surface is flat.
We also know that our result is always written in

terms of square units.

NOTE: Some area formulas have one or more
constants in front other than 1, such as () or
pi. However, this has no effect on our result.

Example

Example: Lets suppose we have a rectangle with a length

of 4 cm and a width of 3 cm. What is the area? Well we

know from our formula that the area is length times
width. So our area is
3 cm 4 cm = 12 cm2.
Notice that we multiplied the two measurements that

were given to us.

In general, any 2D object has two measurements (and

some constant, in this case our constant is simply 1). In

our next slide we will see how this helps us with 3D
shapes.

3D Shapes

In order to understand volume better, lets look at the

difference between 2D and 3D shapes. What is

different and what is similar?

Our square only has length and width (which are the

same in this case). Our cube though, has length,

width, and depth. Notice that the front face (and the
rest) of the cube is that same exact square on the left!

Volume

Volume is written in terms of cube units. Why?

Because with 3D shapes, we are given three

different measurements, which in the end gives

us three units multiplied together.
NOTE: We always want to write our result in
terms of one unit of measurement. This means
that if we are working in inches, then our result
must be in inches so that our result is in in3.
This can be done by making a quick conversion.

Volume Formulas

In general volume formulas are similar to area

formulas except we add one more measurement.

Cube: lengthwidthdepth
Sphere: (4/3)(pi)radius3
Square Pyramid: (1/3)lengthwidthheight
Cone: (1/3)(pi)radius2height
Cylinder: (pi) radius2height
These are the volume formulas we will mainly work

with in this course.

Example

Suppose we have a cylinder with a diameter of 24 in.

and a height of 3 ft. What is the volume in terms of

in.?
Our formula for cylinders is (pi)radius2height.
Notice we are given the diameter instead of the
radius, so our radius is 12 in., and a conversion from
feet to inches gives us a height of 36 inches. So the
volume of our cylinder is
(pi)(12 in)2(36 in) = 16,286 in3.

Applications

Lets suppose we want to find the amount of space this

hanging statue takes up (volume). If our cone has a height
of 4 ft., a radius of 2 ft., and our semi-sphere a radius of 2
ft., then we can find the volumes of our cone and our semisphere separately and add them together to get the
volume of the entire statue. Using our formulas we obtain
(1/3)(pi)(2 ft.)2(4 ft.)+(1/2)(4/3)(pi)(2 ft)3
=16.76 ft3+16.75 ft3
= 33.51 ft3.

Note that in order to find the volume of a semi-sphere, we

only need to multiply the volume of a sphere by (1/2).

Applications Cont.

As you can see, we can apply these formulas

to things outside of class!

Buildings
Trailer trucks
Containers, and more.
Someday it will come in handy!

Conclusion

We learned that volume is similar to area

except we are adding another measurement

since we are working with 3D shapes.
We also learned the different formulas for

certain shapes.
And we finally saw that we can apply this

outside of class!