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
Surface integral of the graph of some scalar function, say formula_3, we have where formula_5. So that formula_6, and formula_7. So, which is the standard formula for the area of a surface described this way. One can recognize the vector in the second line above as the normal vector to the surface. Note that because of the presence of the cross product, the above formulas only work for surfaces embedded in three-dimensional space. This can be seen as integrating a Riemannian volume form on the parameterized surface, where the metric tensor is given by the first fundamental form of the surface. Consider