Surface area in the study of fractals. Extensions of the notion of area which partially fulfill its function and may be defined even for very badly irregular surfaces are studied in geometric measure theory. A specific example of such an extension is the Minkowski content of the surface. The below given formulas can be used to show that the surface area of a sphere and cylinder of the same radius and height are in the ratio 2 : 3, as follows. Let the radius be "r" and the height be "h" (which is 2"r" for the sphere). formula_7 The discovery of this
Surface-area-to-volume ratio very large surface area for a given volume. The surface-area-to-volume ratio has physical dimension L (inverse length) and is therefore expressed in units of inverse distance. As an example, a cube with sides of length 1 cm will have a surface area of 6 cm and a volume of 1 cm. The surface to volume ratio for this cube is thus For a given shape, SA:V is inversely proportional to size. A cube 2 cm on a side has a ratio of 3 cm, half that of a cube 1 cm on a side. Conversely, preserving SA:V as size increases