Surface tension gases. The pressure inside an ideal (one surface) soap bubble can be derived from thermodynamic free energy considerations. At constant temperature and particle number, , the differential Helmholtz energy is given by where is the difference in pressure inside and outside of the bubble, and is the surface tension. In equilibrium, , and so, For a spherical bubble, the volume and surface area are given simply by and Substituting these relations into the previous expression, we find which is equivalent to the Young–Laplace equation when . For real soap bubbles, the pressure is doubled due to the presence of two
Surface area area of the whole surface is then obtained by adding together the areas of the pieces, using additivity of surface area. The main formula can be specialized to different classes of surfaces, giving, in particular, formulas for areas of graphs "z" = "f"("x","y") and surfaces of revolution. One of the subtleties of surface area, as compared to arc length of curves, is that surface area cannot be defined simply as the limit of areas of polyhedral shapes approximating a given smooth surface. It was demonstrated by Hermann Schwarz that already for the cylinder, different choices of approximating flat surfaces can