
278 Chapter 7
how much water?
Typical engineer. Instead of giving you the amount of water in
terms of a measure that might actually make some sense, like
cups or spoonfuls or gallons, he’s talking about cubic meters. So,
how much is 3 cubic meters of water? A bathful? A pondful? A
swimming poolful?
Let’s start by think about what just 1 cubic meter actually is:
Is 3 cubic meters of water a lot or a little?
A cube-shaped container with length, width, and
depth all of one meter holds exactly one cubic
meter of water.
So 3 cubic meters of water is the volume of water
you could store in three of those one meter cubes:
1m
1m
1m
Length
Width
Depth
Volume of a cube = length x width x depth
1m
1m
1m
1m
1m
1m
1m
1m
1m
+
+
3 cubic meters =
Cubic meter = 1m x 1m x 1m
= 1m
3