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: how many sugar cubes 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 the actual cube size and how tightly they pack.

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, which is handy for portion control or measuring spoonfuls of frozen liquid.
• Bouillon cubes. A typical stock cube is close to 10 mm on a side, which makes it exactly 1 cm³ of compressed salt, fat and dried extract.
• Concrete test specimens. Construction labs cast 100 mm or 150 mm concrete cubes for compression testing, which is 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. That is 5,832 cubic inches, and dividing by 1,728 gives 3.375 cubic feet. Watch that conversion: a cubic foot is 1,728 cubic inches, not 100 or 1,000, and reading 5,832 in³ as “5.83 ft³” is the single most common way to be wrong by 73% on a moving quote.
• 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. A building twice the size feels 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.