Surface area representing a cell as an idealized sphere of radius "r", the volume and surface area are, respectively, "V" = 4/3 π "r"; "SA" = 4 π "r". The resulting surface area to volume ratio is therefore 3/"r". Thus, if a cell has a radius of 1 μm, the SA:V ratio is 3; whereas if the radius of the cell is instead 10 μm, then the SA:V ratio becomes 0.3. With a cell radius of 100, SA:V ratio is 0.03. Thus, the surface area falls off steeply with increasing volume. Surface area The surface area of a solid object is a
Finite volume method tensor. Again we can sub-divide the spatial domain into finite volumes or cells. For a particular cell, formula_42, we take the volume integral over the total volume of the cell, formula_43, which gives, On integrating the first term to get the "volume average" and applying the "divergence theorem" to the second, this yields where formula_46 represents the total surface area of the cell and formula_47 is a unit vector normal to the surface and pointing outward. So, finally, we are able to present the general result equivalent to (8), i.e. Again, values for the edge fluxes can be reconstructed by