Volume Relationships

Today in grade 9, we took a few minutes break from our review to explore the volume relationships between prisms and the pyramids with the same base and height.

These transparent solids are great for modelling the relationship. We can pour water using the pyramid and try to fill up the prism. The class took some guesses and most landed on 2, or maybe 1.5 as the guess for how many times the pyramid will be filled and dumped into the prism to fill it.

Here’s the picture after 1 time, 2 times, and after 3 times. We noticed that for each prism it takes 3 of the pyramid to fill it up. That means the volume of the pyramid is 1/3 of the volume of the prism. We’ll be using this on our next cycle after tomorrow’s test.