The volume of other right prisms can also be determined, but often the challenge is calculating the area of the base.

Consider the right pentagonal prism shown.

Determine a formula for the volume of the prism.

The base of the prism can be broken into five separate triangles of equal size to facilitate an area calculation.

Volume of a right pentagonal prism = (5 × area of one triangle in the base) × height of the prism

This base area calculation may seem familiar. You used this same strategy when finding the surface area of prisms and pyramids in the previous Lesson.