This project fits into the Filling and Wrapping book.  Students will have already learned the formulas for a right circular cylinder, cone and sphere in class and have already done the problems where students put a sphere in a cylinder and fill a cylinder with a cone.  This lesson will give students another method to compare these three shapes.

Depending on the level of the class, students can use the pre-made spreadsheet and fill in various values or students can set up their own spreadsheet.  The challenging part in setting up the spreadsheet is to correctly input the formulas to calculate the volume.  You can link to a worksheet that will take students through steps to set up a spreadsheet.  This would probably be more appropriate for the honors level.  You may want to print the worksheet with directions and space for answers.  These directions can also be found on the student information page.

Make sure students only enter positive values.  The spreadsheet will calculate with negative values but a negative answer does not make sense in this application.  The spreadsheet is set to indicate a negative number in red.  The cells containing the formulas are locked to prevent accidental changes.  If a cell shows a series of ####, it means the number entered is too large to fit in the cell.  To fix it, just choose a smaller number.

You may need to discuss with the class that the spreadsheet is set to round to two decimal places and that the 0.33 and 0.67 represent fractions.  This might also lead to a discussion about the limitations of representing some numbers in the calculator or computer.