How to Find Volume in Cubic Feet

Video Transcript

"So how does one find your volume in cubic feet? Hi, I'm Jimmy Chang; I've been teaching College Mathematics for nine years and volume is the amount of space occupied by a solid; solid being a three-dimensional object. So because you are measuring things in three dimensions, your answer tends to be in cubic units as in cubic centimeters, cubic inches and cubic feet. Now in terms of being able to measure things in cubic feet, you do need to know the dimensions of course ahead of time. So here's an example as for a box. Suppose you have a box; let's set the dimensions, length is 8 feet, the width is 3 feet and the height is 2 feet. So all you need to do is volume for a box. The volume of a box is length X width X height. So, not only do you need to multiply the numbers; but to get an accurate picture as to how, what kind of units to display, you need to multiply the feet along with them. So here we go. The volume of this box is going to be, 8 feet X 3 feet X 2 feet. Multiplying the numbers are pretty straightforward here; 8 X 3 is 24; 24 X 2 is going to give you 48. But here's the most important part, it's not just feet, but rather you have to multiply the feet units as well. Feet X feet X feet, because there's three of them that you're multiplying, your final answer is going to be 48 feet cubed or 48 cubic feet. When you take an exam know you'll not only will see a choice that will say 48 cubic feet, but you might see distractors like 48 feet or 48 square feet. Don't be fooled. So, I'm Jimmy Chang and that's an example as to how you would find the volume using cubic feet."