How do you calculate volume with cubes of fraction lengths? I'm doing some exercises on Khanacademy.org and I keep having trouble with one exercise. The questions are like this: how many 1/4cm cubes does it take to fill a prism if the prism is 1cm xx 7/4cm xx 2cm? I consistently get these wrong and Khan academy's explanations aren't working for me. I've tried converting all the side lengths to multiples(?) of 1/4, such as 4/4xx7/4xx8/4 and multiplying but I still get the wrong answer. How do I calculate this?

Gavyn Whitehead

Gavyn Whitehead

Answered question

2022-09-08

How do you calculate volume with cubes of fraction lengths?
I keep having trouble with one exercise. The questions are like this: how many 1 / 4cm cubes does it take to fill a prism if the prism is 1cm ×  7 / 4cm × 2cm?
I've tried converting all the side lengths to multiples(?) of 1 / 4, such as 4 / 4 × 7 / 4 × 8 / 4 and multiplying but I still get the wrong answer. How do I calculate this?

Answer & Explanation

Yaritza Cardenas

Yaritza Cardenas

Beginner2022-09-09Added 20 answers

You have to find for each side, independently, how many cubes would fit in that side.
1 / 4 fits 4 times in the side 1
1 / 4 fits 7 times in the side 7 / 4
1 / 4 fits 8 times in the side 2
The answer is then 4 × 7 × 8 = 224
Another way of answering would be by starting to write everything in multiples of 1 / 4 like you did, and then remove all the / 4 from the denominators. That would leave you with the question:
How many cubes of side 1 fit into a rectangle of sides 4 × 7 × 8? And then yes, you multiply.

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