Cube Root Calculator

Undoing a Cube

Where a square root undoes squaring, a cube root undoes raising a number to the third power. The distinction that matters most in practice is that cube roots, unlike square roots, are perfectly well-defined for negative numbers — there's no need for imaginary results, because a negative number cubed stays negative, and the cube root simply reverses that.

The Formula

∛x

For negative inputs, the calculator computes the cube root of the positive equivalent and reapplies the negative sign, since raising a negative base to a fractional exponent directly can produce unreliable results in floating-point arithmetic.

Where Cube Roots Are Used

  • Volume-to-length conversion — finding the side length of a cube from its volume, or scaling a 3D object by a target volume ratio.
  • Engineering and materials science — certain stress and material property formulas involve cube roots directly.
  • Statistics — cube-root transformations are used to normalize skewed data, particularly data that can include negative values.
Worked examples
InputCube Root
273
644
−8−2

How to Use This Calculator

  1. Enter a number in the Number field.
  2. Select Calculate to see the cube root, rounded to six decimal places.

Related Calculations

Need a square root or a root of any other degree? See the Square Root Calculator and the general-purpose Nth Root Calculator.