Question

What is the measure of how much surface an object has?

Answer 1

surface area? lateral area?

Answer 2

Surface area

Answer 3

what do you want to know about it?

Answer 4

Surface area is like any area, say for example a piece of paper, which has a length L and width W. The area of the paper would be \(L\times W\). For a cube, which now has depth D, it would have a surface are \(6\times L^2\) since for cubes L=W=D.

Notice that the units are squared such as inches squared, or meters squared, even for the cube. If you have some complex shape such as a tube, its surface area would still have units squared.

So surface area, like the area of a piece of paper, measures that part of the object that you can "see" on the "outside." For the piece of paper you get to choose what is outside -- so you just measure one side of the surface. This is in contrast with volume, which measures how much "space" there is "inside" an object and has measure units cubed as opposed to surface area which has measure units squared.

Answer 5

Surface area