Volume of Prisms

Programme Outline

Katie slices some solids to demonstrate how you can tell if they are prisms or not, and Jamie learns how these solids form the basic building blocks for designers of computer games. Computer trickery shows how any 2-dimensional shape can be electronically expanded to create a prism.

Having outlined how to find the volume of a prism, Katie visits the Blue Planet Aquarium and is amazed by the massive volumes of water required to fill the tropical fish tanks. She looks at some ordinary fish tanks and demonstrates how to find the volumes of these smaller prisms. She converts her answer to litres and leaves the viewer with sufficient information to work out a final volume calculation.

In this week's 'Tick or Trash', Katie and Jamie work out the volume of a trapezoidal prism. Katie's error with units leads to a visual demonstration of conversion between cm3 and m3.

Jamie goes on location to Manchester airport where he sees why volume is important to the business of loading cargo on to planes. The freight containers are designed to maximise space available in the hold and turn out to be unusually shaped prisms.