volumes of open ended prisms

The first 200 words of this essay...

Part 1

For part 1 of this piece of math coursework I will be investigating volumes of prisms, which can be made from a 24cm, by 32cm piece of card. I will be trying to determine which shape will make the prism with the largest volume. To do this, I will be exploring the volumes of triangular prism, cylinders, quadrilateral prisms, pentagonal prism, hexagonal prism, heptagonal prism and octagonal prism. I will then try to work out a formula for working out the volume of an "n" sided shape.

Triangular prisms

First, I will be investigating the volume of triangular prisms. We know that in a triangle, the lengths of the left and right sides must add up to more than the length of the base and we also know that the volume of any prism is the area of cross section multiplied by the length.

To find the volume, we must first find the area of the

7cm cross-section. To find the area of a triangle we must

h use the formula Area(a) = base (b) x height (h)