There are 51 NRICH Mathematical resources connected to Volume and capacity, you may find related items under Measuring and calculating with units.
Broad Topics > Measuring and calculating with units > Volume and capacity
What do you think is going to happen in this video clip? Are you surprised?
A colourful cube is made from little red and yellow cubes. But can you work out how many of each?
In this activity focusing on capacity, you will need a collection of different jars and bottles.
For this activity which explores capacity, you will need to collect some bottles and jars.
How can you change the surface area of a cuboid but keep its volume the same? How can you change the volume but keep the surface area the same?
Can you rank these sets of quantities in order, from smallest to largest? Can you provide convincing evidence for your rankings?
Can you sketch graphs to show how the height of water changes in different containers as they are filled?
Can you lay out the pictures of the drinks in the way described by the clue cards?
The challenge for you is to make a string of six (or more!) graded cubes.
What happens to the area and volume of 2D and 3D shapes when you enlarge them?
Various solids are lowered into a beaker of water. How does the water level rise in each case?
Imagine different shaped vessels being filled. Can you work out what the graphs of the water level should look like?
What's the largest volume of box you can make from a square of paper?
My measurements have got all jumbled up! Swap them around and see if you can find a combination where every measurement is valid.
A group of children are using measuring cylinders but they lose the labels. Can you help relabel them?
A plastic funnel is used to pour liquids through narrow apertures. What shape funnel would use the least amount of plastic to manufacture for any specific volume ?
An aluminium can contains 330 ml of cola. If the can's diameter is 6 cm what is the can's height?
Use a single sheet of A4 paper and make a cylinder having the greatest possible volume. The cylinder must be closed off by a circle at each end.
What is the greatest volume you can get for a rectangular (cuboid) parcel if the maximum combined length and girth are 2 metres?
Cut differently-sized square corners from a square piece of paper to make boxes without lids. Do they all have the same volume?
An activity for high-attaining learners which involves making a new cylinder from a cardboard tube.
If I don't have the size of cake tin specified in my recipe, will the size I do have be OK?
Can you choose your units so that a cube has the same numerical value for it volume, surface area and total edge length?
Which of these infinitely deep vessels will eventually full up?
Can you draw the height-time chart as this complicated vessel fills with water?
In the ancient city of Atlantis a solid rectangular object called a Zin was built in honour of the goddess Tina. Your task is to determine on which day of the week the obelisk was completed.
What is the smallest cuboid that you can put in this box so that you cannot fit another that's the same into it?
What is the largest cuboid you can wrap in an A3 sheet of paper?
If the radius of the tubing used to make this stand is r cm, what is the volume of tubing used?
An irregular tetrahedron has two opposite sides the same length a and the line joining their midpoints is perpendicular to these two edges and is of length b. What is the volume of the tetrahedron?
A right circular cone is filled with liquid to a depth of half its vertical height. The cone is inverted. How high up the vertical height of the cone will the liquid rise?
Imagine two identical cylindrical pipes meeting at right angles and think about the shape of the space which belongs to both pipes. Early Chinese mathematicians call this shape the mouhefanggai.
These formulae are often quoted, but rarely proved. In this article, we derive the formulae for the volumes of a square-based pyramid and a cone, using relatively simple mathematical concepts.
This jar used to hold perfumed oil. It contained enough oil to fill granid silver bottles. Each bottle held enough to fill ozvik golden goblets and each goblet held enough to fill vaswik crystal spoons. Each day a spoonful was used to perfume the bath of a beautiful princess. For how many days did the whole jar last? The genie's master replied: Five hundred and ninety five days. What three numbers do the genie's words granid, ozvik and vaswik stand for?
What size square should you cut out of each corner of a 10 x 10 grid to make the box that would hold the greatest number of cubes?
What is the volume of the solid formed by rotating this right angled triangle about the hypotenuse?
The builders have dug a hole in the ground to be filled with concrete for the foundations of our garage. How many cubic metres of ready-mix concrete should the builders order to fill this hole to make the concrete raft for the foundations?
According to Plutarch, the Greeks found all the rectangles with integer sides, whose areas are equal to their perimeters. Can you find them? What rectangular boxes, with integer sides, have their surface areas equal to their volumes?
A box has faces with areas 3, 12 and 25 square centimetres. What is the volume of the box?
A tetrahedron has two identical equilateral triangles faces, of side length 1 unit. The other two faces are right angled isosceles triangles. Find the exact volume of the tetrahedron.
Two circles of equal size intersect and the centre of each circle is on the circumference of the other. What is the area of the intersection? Now imagine that the diagram represents two spheres of equal volume with the centre of each sphere on the surface of the other. What is the volume of intersection?
P is the midpoint of an edge of a cube and Q divides another edge in the ratio 1 to 4. Find the ratio of the volumes of the two pieces of the cube cut by a plane through PQ and a vertex.
We went to the cinema and decided to buy some bags of popcorn so we asked about the prices. Investigate how much popcorn each bag holds so find out which we might have bought.
Investigate the area of 'slices' cut off this cube of cheese. What would happen if you had different-sized block of cheese to start with?
If you had 36 cubes, what different cuboids could you make?