How to Measure the Volume of a Cuboid

What is a cuboid?

A cuboid, also referred to as a rectangular prism, is a solid three-dimensional box (or object) that has six faces that are all rectangles. Here’s an example of a cuboid:

What is volume?

The volume is the amount the three-dimensional shape takes up.

How do we measure the volume of the cuboid?

Let’s say the cuboid is empty. We want to find out how much liquid the cuboid can contain – the volume of that shape.

If you look at this shape, there are three dimensions and, therefore, three different measurements: length, width and height. In order to work out the volume we need to multiply these three measurements.

The formula for the volume of a cuboid is:

Sometimes we shorten this to:

V = lwh

Let’s use an example.

The answer is: Volume = 150 in3

The volume of this cuboid is 150 cubic inches.

If you want some practice, we have worksheets on finding the volume of cuboids in our grade 4 geometry section.