Teachers TV: Volume of 3-Dimensional Shapes

Inside Maths builds on the success of the series Maths 4 Real. Fran uses different cakes to explain to Dave what a prism is. He’s promised a piece of Battenberg if he can find a new fish tank for her brother. With Dave gone, Fran explains, using vivid graphics, how to work out the volume of both a cuboid and a cylinder. When Dave arrives at Fran’s brother’s house he finds an accurate but rather slow way of working out the volume on a rectangular fish tank. He then struggles to find the volume of an unusually shaped tank. Back in the studio Fran shows us how to work out the volume of different fish tanks using the formula: volume = cross-sectional area times height. Then she is set a challenge by Dave, who tells her that the fish tank man can build a made-to-measure cylindrical tank; all Fran has to do is work out how high she wants it.