Height of a Square Pyramid Calculator

Use this height of a square pyramid calculator to find the height or altitude of any right square pyramid by entering any two known measurements of the said pyramid.

Clear
Volume96
Surface area138.528045
Surface-to-volume ratio1.443falls as the shape gets bigger
Slant height8.544004up the middle of a face
Lateral edge9.055385along a corner to the apex
Base area36
Lateral area102.528045
Face angle from the base69.444°

The formula

V = ⅓s²h, slant l = √(h² + (s/2)²)

Volume scales with the cube

Double every length and the surface area quadruples while the volume grows eightfold. This is why doubling a container’s dimensions gives eight times the capacity but only four times the material — and why scaling models up rarely works the way intuition suggests.

The one-third family

Cones and pyramids are always exactly one third of the prism or cylinder that would enclose them, whatever the base shape. A sphere sits at two thirds of its enclosing cylinder — the result Archimedes asked to have carved on his tomb.

Units

Enter every dimension in the same unit; volume comes out cubed and surface area squared. If you work in centimetres, one litre is 1,000 cm³, which is why the capacity row is shown on the box and cylinder pages.