Cube Volume Calculator

V = s³

Six equal square faces, all sides the same length. Volume is the side length cubed.

Quick reference for a few sizes:

Worked example — sugar cube count in a kilo: A standard white sugar cube is about 12 mm × 12 mm × 12 mm. Volume per cube = 1.728 cm³. White sugar density ≈ 0.85 g/cm³. Mass per cube ≈ 1.47 g. A 1 kg bag holds about 680 cubes — give or take depending on actual cube size and packing.

Where cubes show up in real measurements:

• Sugar cubes and ice cubes. Standard ice cube trays produce roughly 1-inch cubes. A 1-inch cube of pure water weighs about 16.4 g — useful for portion control or measuring spoonfuls of frozen liquid.
• Bouillon cubes. Most chicken/beef bouillon cubes are about 10 mm cubes, weighing ~3 g.
• Concrete test specimens. Construction labs cast 100 mm or 150 mm concrete cubes for compression testing — exactly 1,000 cm³ or 3,375 cm³ of test material.
• Rubik’s cubes. Standard size is about 57 mm, so the toy’s outer volume is ~185 cm³ (though most of that is internal mechanism, not solid).
• Cardboard moving boxes. Many medium-size moving boxes are about 18-inch cubes — 5.83 cubic feet of storage volume.
• Storage cubes/baskets. Storage organizers are typically 11" or 13" cubes (~22 L and ~36 L respectively).

Volume scales with the cube of side length.

This is the key intuition with cubes. Double the side, and the volume goes up 8× (2³). Triple the side, and the volume goes up 27×. A 1 m cube is 1,000 L; a 2 m cube is 8,000 L. People consistently underestimate this — building doubles in size feel about twice as big, but they hold eight times as much.

Cube vs. sphere of the same “size”: A cube with side length d has volume d³. A sphere inscribed in that cube (diameter d) has volume (π/6)d³ ≈ 0.524 × d³. So a sphere fits about 52% of the bounding cube. The remaining 48% is corner space.