Depth 1 · 36 s
A cube of water
Volume is how much space a thing takes up, or a container holds. A cube 10 cm on each side holds one litre; a cube 1 cm on each side is a millilitre, and 1,000 of them make a litre. A litre of water has a mass of about one kilogram - which is how the kilogram was first made.
About this video
Bottles say 1.5 l, medicine spoons 5 ml, fuel tanks 50 litres. All of these measure volume: how much space something takes up, or how much a container can hold. This animation shows what a litre actually is: the space inside a cube 10 cm long on each side. Split that cube into tiny cubes 1 cm on each side and each one is a millilitre; 1,000 of them fill the litre.
Fill the litre cube with water and put it on a kitchen scale: it weighs about 1 kilogram. That is no accident. When the metric system was made in the 1790s, the kilogram was first defined as the mass of a litre of water. It only works for water, though. A litre of cooking oil has less mass (about 0.9 kg) and a litre of honey more (about 1.4 kg).
This video shows depth 1 of Volume.
Learn VolumeTranscript
- 0:001.5 litres. 5 millilitres. 50 litres. What do they measure?
- 0:04The space something takes up, or holds, is its volume.
- 0:09Build a cube 10 centimetres on each side. It holds exactly one litre.
- 0:14A one-centimetre cube is a millilitre. A thousand fill the litre.
- 0:19Weigh that litre of water: about one kilogram.
- 0:23That's how the kilogram was first made: from water.
- 0:27It only works for water. Oil is lighter, honey heavier.
- 0:31A litre is a cube of space. Of water, a kilogram.