Question

Imagine a cell that has the shape of a cube with sides that are 3cm long. What is the surface area to volume ratio?

Answer 1

To find the surface area to volume ratio, we first need to find the surface area and the volume.

To find surface area, we just need to take the area of one of the faces and multiply that by 6 (since there are 6 faces on a cube).

We know that the length of one side is 3cm. To find the area of one face, we just need to multiply length * height. Since it's a cube, length and height will be the same.

3 * 3 = 9

The area of one face is 9. To find the surface area of the cube, we need to multiply the area of one face by 6.

9 * 6 = 54

The surface area of the cell is 54cm2.

Now to find volume. 
The volume of a rectangular prism is simply length by width by height.

3 * 3 * 3 = 27

The volume of the cell is 27cm3

The surface area to volume ratio for this cubical cell is 54:27, or 2:1.
Hope this helped =)