How to Find the Volume of Basic 3-D Figures

Video Transcript

"Hi, I'm Steve Jones and I'm going to tell you how to calculate the volumes of some basic three-D shapes. The first set of shapes are cones and you can see that in the formula pie r squared is in fact the area of the base. So for a cone or anything conical we can use this area of the base. If it's a square it's just B squared, multiplied by a third and times the perpendicular height. So that is for the whole group of shapes called cones. Rectangular prisms or prisms in general. It is simply the vertical height multiplied again, by this base area. So if you think the base area is B times W, that is the area of the base, and we multiply it by the vertical height. So this is all of the figures that could be described as rectangular prisms, including the cube. The last, and not the least is the sphere. We know the sphere, the area is the is simply four thirds pie R cubed. Obviously the others in the group, like the hemisphere, which is just half a sphere would be included in that. If we want to work out other shapes we can usually find that they will be a combination of these very basic shapes."