Capacity and Volume
Capacity and Volume
Capacity
Capacity is the amount a container can hold.
The oil, juice drink and gasoline containers are just a few examples of
objects that illustrate capacity.
Capacity is measured in the SI base unit called litres (L). The most common units for
capacity are litre (L) and millilitre (mL).
Examples
Volume
Volume is the amount of space a container or object occupies.
One centimetre cubed will hold one millilitre of fluid or another substance.
1000 cm3 will hold one thousand millilitres of fluid or another substance.
cm cm h
cm
cm = 3.14
Volume of a cube or rectangular prism Volume of a cylinder
= lwh = r2 h
= cm cm cm = cm2 cm
= cm3 = cm3
Examples
6 cm
How much space does the box take up? 576 cm3
B) Calculate the volume of a book that has a length of 10 cm, a width of 3.2 cm and a
height of 15 cm.
V= lwh
10 3.2 15
= 480 cm3
1. Shaz is cleaning under the kitchen sink. He found five 2-litre bottles of glass
cleaner. None of the bottles is full. The bottles contain the following amounts.
Bottle 1 375 ml
Bottle 2 150 ml
Bottle 3 190 ml
Bottle 4 780 ml
Bottle 5 630 ml
b) If Shaz combines all of the glass cleaners into as few bottles as possible, how
many bottles will he use?
a) 250 mL = L
b) 1350 mL = L
c) 62 L = mL
d) 0.9 L = mL
e) 625 mL = L
f) 3.8 L = mL
Estimate the capacity of each container and record these values in the table.
Think About
Think about the different uses of capacity and volume in your community. Collect
examples and think about the different jobs that are in charge of monitoring or
maintaining volume or capacity.
1. Kathy played a practical joke on her sister. She filled a box with Styrofoam chips
and wrapped it. If the box measures 12 cm by 5 cm by 15 cm, what volume of chips
did Kathy use to completely fill the box?
2. a) Various sizes of containers are filled to the top with water. Determine the volume
of water and the capacity of each container by performing the following
conversions.
Complete the three empty rows using containers from school, home or
workplace.
cm3 mL L
45
20
160
12