Solid angle of its faces is one-sixth of that, or sr. Solid angles can also be measured in square degrees (1 sr = () square degrees), in square minutes and square seconds, or in fractions of the sphere (1 sr = fractional area), also known as spat (1 sp = 4 sr). In spherical coordinates there is a formula for the differential, where is the colatitude (angle from the North pole) and is the longitude. The solid angle for an arbitrary oriented surface S subtended at a point P is equal to the solid angle of the projection of the surface S
Surface integral of the graph of some scalar function, say formula_3, we have where formula_5. So that formula_6, and formula_7. So, which is the standard formula for the area of a surface described this way. One can recognize the vector in the second line above as the normal vector to the surface. Note that because of the presence of the cross product, the above formulas only work for surfaces embedded in three-dimensional space. This can be seen as integrating a Riemannian volume form on the parameterized surface, where the metric tensor is given by the first fundamental form of the surface. Consider