Van der Waals surface research use of a model showing the van der Waals surfaces of molecules. Related to the title concept are the ideas of a "van der Waals volume", V, and a "van der Waals surface area," abbreviated variously as A, vdWSA, VSA, and WSA. A van der Waals surface area is an abstract conception of the surface area of atoms or molecules from a mathematical estimation, either computing it from first principles or by integrating over a corresponding van der Waals volume. In simplest case, for a spherical monatomic gas, it is simply the computed surface area of a sphere of
Platonic solid by where "θ" is the dihedral angle. The midradius "ρ" is given by where "h" is the quantity used above in the definition of the dihedral angle ("h" = 4, 6, 6, 10, or 10). Note that the ratio of the circumradius to the inradius is symmetric in "p" and "q": The surface area, "A", of a Platonic solid {"p", "q"} is easily computed as area of a regular "p"-gon times the number of faces "F". This is: The volume is computed as "F" times the volume of the pyramid whose base is a regular "p"-gon and whose height is