Week 4 Lab: Cubic Weight Lab
Measure your own week 1 package and find out whether its box size was quietly inflating its shipping cost
15 March 2027
Before the lab#
Bring back your week 1 package. You’ll need a tape measure or ruler and something to weigh it on — kitchen or bathroom scales are fine; if you genuinely can’t weigh it, estimate from the product’s listed weight and say so.
In the lab#
- Measure — record the outer length, width and height of your box in metres (not cm — the formula wants metres), and its actual weight in kilograms.
- Compute — apply the formula from Monday’s lecture: cubic weight (kg) = L x W x H x 250. Compare it against the actual weight and state which one is chargeable.
- Diagnose — if cubic weight came out higher, work out how much of that is genuinely needed (fragile contents, required cushioning per week 3) versus how much is unused space that a tighter box would have removed. If actual weight came out higher, say so — not every package is volume-bound, and that’s also a finding.
- Compare — as a class, line up everyone’s cubic-to-actual ratios. Which product categories show the biggest gap, and does that match what week 1 predicted about logistics-cost logic?
Afterwards#
Keep your numbers. Week 6 revisits the three week 1 case studies with every formula so far, including this one — you’ll need a real cubic-weight comparison for at least one of them.
The spec
What you bring to the session. Written so a reader can tell whether it has been met without asking you.
- you have measured your week 1 package's outer length, width and height in metres, and its actual weight in kilograms
- you have computed its cubic weight using Monday's formula, and stated which weight (cubic or actual) is the chargeable one and by how much
- you can say, in one sentence, whether your package's box size was adding to its shipping cost beyond what the product itself required
Teaching team
- Idris Fenn — tutor