What Are the Metric Units for Volume?

This entry uses the metric system. For the imperial system click here.

Volume measures how much can fit inside of something. How much water is in your bathtub? How much milk is in a carton? How big is the trunk of your car?

Volume is measured in cubic meters or in liters. One cubic meter is a cube in which each side is one meter long. We use the units we learned from length to create smaller cubes. Then, we get cubic decimeters (dm³), cubic centimeters (cm²) and cubic millimeters (mm³).

One cubic decimeter is a cube where each side is one tenth of a meter, or one decimeter. A cubic decimeter is the same as one liter (L). Imagine that you have a box which is as large as one cubic decimeter. If you grab your liter measure from the kitchen and fill it with water, you’ll see that you can fit exactly one liter in the box. Therefore, we say that the box has a volume of $1$ L or 1 cubic decimeter.

Below, you see the connection between different cubic meters and measures of liters. It is expected of you to be able to convert one unit into another, and between cubic meters and liters. The link is as follows: $1{\text{dm}}^3=1\text{L}$ and $1{\text{cm}}^3=1\text{mL}$.