Volume of a pyramid approximated by prisms
- Author:
- David Griswold
Drag the blue dots to change the length, width, and height of your pyramid. The black wire prism has the same base and height as the pyramid - it is called the bounding prism and its volume can be seen on the left.
To explore the volume of the pyramid, look at either the "inner prisms" or the "outer prisms", which both attempt to estimate the pyramid volume by breaking it into smaller prisms. You can change the number of prisms with the "numsplits" slider. The info about the smaller prisms is shown below.
Play around with this and see if you can find a pattern relating the volume of the pyramid to the volume of the bounding prism.