Solid angle is much, much farther away. The solid angle subtended by the complete ()-dimensional spherical surface of the unit sphere in -dimensional Euclidean space can be defined in any number of dimensions . One often needs this solid angle factor in calculations with spherical symmetry. It is given by the formula where is the gamma function. When is an integer, the gamma function can be computed explicitly. It follows that This gives the expected results of 4 steradians for the 3D sphere bounded by a surface of area and 2 radians for the 2D circle bounded by a circumference of length
Surface energy radius formula_1 and length formula_2 at high temperature and a constant uniaxial tension formula_3, then at equilibrium, the variation of the total Helmholtz free energy vanishes and we have where formula_5 is the Helmholtz free energy and formula_6 is the surface area of the rod: Also, since the volume (formula_8) of the rod remains constant, the variation (formula_9) of the volume is zero, i.e., Therefore, the surface energy density can be expressed as The surface energy density of the solid can be computed by measuring formula_3, formula_1, and formula_2 at equilibrium. This method is valid only if the solid is