Volume measurements: what they are for, what they are and how to convert

Volume measurements are measurements used to verify what volume can be occupied within an object or space.

The default volume measurement is the cubic meter (m³), which is equivalent to 1000 liters.

Calculating volume can have many practical uses. See some examples:

• know the amount of concrete needed for a construction,
• find out the amount of water needed to fill a pool,
• calculate the amount of fuel that can be filled in a car.

Calculation of cubic meter

To calculate the cubic meter, the three dimensions that make up a volume are considered: length, height and width.

Thus, 1 m³ corresponds to: 1 m long x 1 m high x 1 m wide.

See these examples:

Example 1: How to calculate the volume of a cube that is 2 m long, 5 m high and 4 m wide? To know the value, you need to do the calculation by multiplying the dimensions (2 x 5 x 4 = 40).

So we know that the cube is 40 m³.

Example 2: How many cm³ they have a cube that is 0.2 cm long; 0.4 cm tall and 0.2 cm wide? To find the result, just multiply the value of each of the measurements (0.2 x 0.4 x 02 = 0.016).

Therefore, the volume of this cube is 0.016 cm³.

Volume measurement units

See what are the different measurement units used to measure volume:

km^3	cubic kilometer
hm^3	cubic hectometer
dam^3	cubic decameter
m^3	cubic meter
dm^3	cubic decimeter
cm^3	cubic centimeter
mm^3	cubic millimeter

Conversion of volume measurements

Conversion is doing the calculation to find equivalences between two different measures. For volume measurements, the conversion is done by multiplying or dividing by 1000.

See how to do it in the table below:

Volume measurement conversion table.

Example: 20 hm³ amount to how many m³? To find out the result, just follow the calculation indications in the table:

20 x 1000 = 20,000 (of hm³ for dam³). 20,000 x 1000 = 20,000,000 (of dam³ for me³).

So 20 hm³ equals 20,000,000 m³.

What is volume?

Volume is the space that is occupied by some substance, it is the determination of what volume can be occupied within an object or space.

It is important to know that the volume can be calculated for containers or structures that have certain shapes, such as cubes, cylinders or pyramids.

Other types of measurement

In addition to volume measurements, there are other types, such as:

• Gauge length (kilometers, meters, centimeters, millimeters).
• measure of time (hours, minutes, seconds).