Monday

Rocket tips a bag of small cubes onto the Blueprint Table. "The storage bin! How many of these fit inside?"

He drops cubes into the clear box one at a time. "Twelve, thirteen, fourteen." A cube bounces onto the floor.

"What do you notice about the bottom layer?" Raven asks. She has already lined it up: four cubes long, three cubes wide.

"Twelve in a layer," Rocket says. "And the box is two cubes tall. Two layers."

Nova hovers over the box, her light sliding down one side. "A layer at a time," she says. "Then count the layers."

"Twelve and twelve," Rocket says. "Twenty-four cubes. That is how much it holds."

Raven writes it in the Blueprint Book: 4 × 3 × 2 = 24 cubic units.

Volume is the space inside a solid. We measure it by counting unit cubes: cubes with every edge 1 unit long.

The bin's bottom layer is 4 cubes by 3 cubes, so one layer holds 4 × 3 = 12 cubes.

The bin is 2 cubes tall, so it holds 2 layers: 2 × 12 = 24 cubes. Its volume is 24 cubic units.

Length times width times height: V = l × w × h. For the bin, 4 × 3 × 2 = 24.

Base area times height: V = B × h. The base is 4 × 3 = 12 square units, and 12 × 2 = 24.

Both say the same thing: count one layer, then multiply by the number of layers.

When the edges are in centimeters, the volume is in cubic centimeters. Area is square units, volume is cubic units.

Layers counted, formula found. Tomorrow the cubes do not fit, and the crew needs half cubes.