Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
Wiktionary
n. 1 The total area on the surface of a three-dimensional figure. 2 (context computing English) The total resources of a system that are available to the outside world and thus might be attacked.
WordNet
Wikipedia
The surface area of a solid object is a measure of the total area that the surface of the object occupies. The mathematical definition of surface area in the presence of curved surfaces is considerably more involved than the definition of arc length of one-dimensional curves, or of the surface area for polyhedra (i.e., objects with flat polygonal faces), for which the surface area is the sum of the areas of its faces. Smooth surfaces, such as a sphere, are assigned surface area using their representation as parametric surfaces. This definition of surface area is based on methods of infinitesimal calculus and involves partial derivatives and double integration.
A general definition of surface area was sought by Henri Lebesgue and Hermann Minkowski at the turn of the twentieth century. Their work led to the development of geometric measure theory, which studies various notions of surface area for irregular objects of any dimension. An important example is the Minkowski content of a surface.
Usage examples of "surface area".
One that percent of the surface area of Antarctica has been tra- has never been listed on any map.
Scholic Bruster Lin once told me that he estimated that Olympos was the size of Arizona, its grassy summit equaling approximately the surface area of Rhode Island.
The marsh, which was essentially a large, shallow lake studded with islands that took up about half its surface area, made for hard movement.
The little red scientists had not even believed such creatures were possible, because of surface area-to-volume constraints, but there they were, clumping around like intelligent robots, so the little red scientists had to explain them.
It was little more than a barrel-shaped rock, with barely the surface area of Washington, D.
The difference between three-fourths and two-thirds may not sound like much, but it is substantial--and, as I have said, measured by volume, and not surface area, Inferno’.
You will find data like mass, surface area, weather, numbers of seas, heights of mountains, and you will also find some scenic views.
Nobody quite knew how far the project would be taken, but if just a hundredth of the 300-mile-diameter volume were to be excavated, the total surface area of the resulting spaces would be over twenty percent that of the former U.
But if the light source is powerful enough and the sails are adjusted appropriately, and if the surface area upon which the light pressure is being exerted is large enough and has relatively little mass….
I did some quick math on the board and showed that the surface area was an order of magnitude greater, hence making the energy collection that much greater.
First, he recorded every square inch of the surface area using long practiced swoops of his camera.