Solid angle orientation formula_9, and distance from the viewer as: where the surface area of a sphere is . The solid angle of a cone with its apex at the apex of the solid angle, and with apex angle 2, is the area of a spherical cap on a unit sphere For small such that , this reduces to the area of a circle . The above is found by computing the following double integral using the unit surface element in spherical coordinates: This formula can also be derived without the use of calculus. Over 2200 years ago Archimedes proved that the
Steinmetz solid observation that the tricylinder can be resampled by the cube with the vertices where 3 edges meet (s. diagram) and 6 curved pyramids (the triangles are parts of cylinder surfaces). The volume and the surface area of the curved triangles can be determined by similar considerations as it is done for the bicylinder above. The volume of a tricylinder is and the surface area is With four cylinders, with axes connecting the vertices of a tetrahedron to the corresponding points on the other side of the solid, the volume is With six cylinders, with axes parallel to the diagonals of