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
Platonic solid by where "θ" is the dihedral angle. The midradius "ρ" is given by where "h" is the quantity used above in the definition of the dihedral angle ("h" = 4, 6, 6, 10, or 10). Note that the ratio of the circumradius to the inradius is symmetric in "p" and "q": The surface area, "A", of a Platonic solid {"p", "q"} is easily computed as area of a regular "p"-gon times the number of faces "F". This is: The volume is computed as "F" times the volume of the pyramid whose base is a regular "p"-gon and whose height is