Solid angle surface area of a spherical cap is always equal to the area of a circle whose radius equals the distance from the rim of the spherical cap to the point where the cap's axis of symmetry intersects the cap. In the diagram this radius is given as: Hence for a unit sphere the solid angle of the spherical cap is given as: When = , the spherical cap becomes a hemisphere having a solid angle 2. The solid angle of the complement of the cone (picture a melon with the cone cut out) is clearly: This is also the solid
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