Section B: Summary Apply Volume Concepts

We investigated several different complex volume questions. For the ancient pyramids of Egypt we gave an estimate of a couple million cubic meters. Since these pyramids are not rectangular prisms, an estimate is the best we could hope for. Then we estimated the volume of the world’s largest wagon, using information from a photograph. Lastly, we investigated the amount of rain that falls on a house and the amount of water our families use in a year.

In each case, we could only make estimates because the situations are all complex. In the previous section we used estimation to check the reasonableness of calculations. In this section we saw that making reasoned estimates is a vital part of applying mathematics to many real world situations.