Solid angle a solid angle in steradians is the following ratio: where A is the spherical surface area and r is the radius of the considered sphere. Solid angles are often used in physics, in particular astrophysics. The solid angle of an object that is very far away is roughly proportional to the ratio of area to squared distance. Here "area" means the area of the object when projected along the viewing direction. The solid angle of a sphere measured from any point in its interior is 4 sr, and the solid angle subtended at the center of a cube by one
Gabriel's Horn using Cavalieri's principle before the invention of calculus, but today calculus can be used to calculate the volume and surface area of the horn between and , where . Using integration (see Solid of revolution and Surface of revolution for details), it is possible to find the volume and the surface area : The surface area formula above gives a lower bound for the area as 2 times the natural logarithm of . There is no upper bound for the natural logarithm of as approaches infinity. That means, in this case, that the horn has an infinite surface area. That