Surface-area-to-volume ratio Surface-area-to-volume ratio The surface-area-to-volume ratio, also called the surface-to-volume ratio and variously denoted sa/vol or SA:V, is the amount of surface area per unit volume of an object or collection of objects. In chemical reactions involving a solid material, the surface area to volume ratio is an important factor for the reactivity, that is, the rate at which the chemical reaction will proceed. For a given volume, the object with the smallest surface area (and therefore with the smallest SA:V) is the sphere, a consequence of the isoperimetric inequality in 3 dimensions. By contrast, objects with tiny spikes will have
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