At first, two cubic feet might not seem like much. However, when you look at it from a 3D perspective, you’ll come to realize just how much space it actually takes up. Below, I’ll describe eight everyday objects that take up about two cubic feet of space.
7 10-Pound Bags of Flour
Flour is one of the staple ingredients needed to make all sorts of delicious pastries. There are also over a dozen types of flour to choose from, many of which do not produce any gluten at all. The most commonly used flour type of all is general-purpose flour, which is used in flaky pie crusts, breads, and even as a thickening agent.
A ten-pound bag of flour will contain enough of the powder to fill 36.2 cups. Since cups are also a volume measurement unit, we can convert it to cubic feet easily. A single ten-pound bag equals 0.3024 cubic feet, so two cubic feet would require around seven bags in total, which is enough to make about 126 large pizzas or 252 medium pizzas with this recipe.
48 Red Clay Bricks
Bricks are one of the most commonly used building materials. Manufacturing bricks are typically made of shale or clay and can last up to 150 years with proper maintenance. The typical red clay brick will measure 8 × 4 × 2.25 inches and take up about 72 cubic inches of space.
Two cubic feet is equal to 3,456 cubic inches, so you would need to stack 48 standard bricks to get there. If you were to stack them all in one pile, the bricks would stand 108 inches tall, assuming there are no layers of mortar sticking the bricks together.
4 Large Foam Boards
Foam board is a highly versatile material that is commonly used as backings for photographs. However, it also has construction applications, including insulating rooms and building tiny buildings to scale. Foam board comes in a variety of sizes, but the largest common size is 36 × 48 inches and half an inch thick.
The volume of such a sheet of foam board would be 864 cubic inches. So, you would need to get precisely four 36 × 48 × 0.5-inch sheets to see what two cubic feet looks like.
Small Wheelbarrow
Whether you work at a construction site or plan on doing some backyard gardening, you’ll need a trusty wheelbarrow to move materials from place to place. A small, home-grade wheelbarrow will carry two cubic feet of material at a time, though that’s not taking into account how high you can pile past the wheelbarrow’s brim.
Legend has it that the first wheelbarrow was invented by the Chinese over 2,000 years ago as a weapon of war. Fast-forward to 1998, and the world saw its first electric wheelbarrow when Honda released the HPE60.
11 Bowling Balls
Bowling has been around for thousands of years, and at one point in England, the sport was banned for encouraging gambling and other unethical activities. Today, it’s a pretty boring sport that’s played by people who don’t know how to play other better sports, but at least the winner gets a trophy or something.
A standard 8- to 16-pound bowling ball will measure 8.5 inches in diameter. The volume of such a ball would be 321.56 cubic inches, so you would need about 11 bowling balls to take up a total space of two cubic feet.
57 Liters of Water
While two different liquids can occupy the same amount of space, their density can cause them to weigh heavier or lighter than the other. For instance, mercury, which is in a liquid state at room temperature, is 13.53 grams per milliliter, whereas water is just one gram per milliliter.
Anyway, if you have 57 one-liter bottles of water or any liquid, it would be about the same as two cubic feet. Here’s a random fact for you—a droplet of water is about 0.05 milliliters, so to fill a two-cubic-foot basin, you would need 1,132,674 drops of water!
18 Cereal Boxes
If you’re a fan of cereal, you probably have at least one box of the popular breakfast food item in your kitchen cabinets right now. Even though there are literally hundreds of different cereal brands, you’ll find that most of them come in the same box size, which is 12 × 8 × 2 inches, giving the box a total volume of 192 cubic inches. On average, a single cereal box will contain between 12 and 14 ounces of your favorite sugary flakes.
The next time you take a stroll through your local supermarket, take a stroll through the cereal aisle and count out 18 family-sized boxes. They should give you a collective volume of precisely two cubic feet.
110 Food Cans
Stocking up on canned food is a good idea if you’re paranoid about the world coming to an end due to nuclear war. Believe it or not, most canned foods are literally nonperishable, meaning that you could leave them in a cool, dark place for thousands of years without worrying about the contents becoming overrun by bacteria. Still, you should eat the canned food before the best-by date.
A typical size #300 can measures 3 inches in diameter and 4-7/16 inches in height, giving it a volume of 31.37 cubic inches. So, if your underground bunker has slightly more than 110 cans of canned food, they’ll take up just about two cubic feet of shelf space.
2.4 Sod Rolls
For those whose front yards are developing bald patches, skip replanting grass seeds and opt for sod rolls instead. You can pick them up in various sizes, and they’re pretty easy to install. When shopping for sod, you might come across rolls that measure 2 feet × 5 feet × 1 inch when rolled flat.
A single roll of sod takes up 1,440 cubic inches of space. So, you would need precisely 2.4 rolls to take up exactly two cubic feet. If you don’t need that much sod, try shopping for sod slabs instead.
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