How to Teach Children the Volume of a Cylinder

Helping your child with his or her homework can be difficult when it has been a long time since you have been in school or do not use things like math formulae often. How to calculate the volume of a cylinder may be one of those things, but can be readily taught to your child if you are aware of a simple formula. Bringing it home with a practical use, like measuring the volume of something in your home, can make it fun.

Things You'll Need

• calculator

Instructions

1. Teach your child about Pi. Pi is the number that represents the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter. Pi is typically rounded to 3.14.

2. Show your child how to measure the radius of a circle. The radius is the distance from any side of the circle to the center of the circle, and is half the diameter.

3. Teach your child that to find the area of a circle, you must multiple the square of the radius of the circle by Pi. Tell your child to envision that a cylinder is simply a bunch of circles stacked up on one another, and that to get the volume of a cylinder he will have to add the volume of all those circles together.

4. Show her that this means that Pi times the radius squared (which is the area for a circle) times the height will give her the volume of the cylinder.

5. Have her practice by measuring the radius and height of a can of soda and calculating the volume.