Related topics: nanoparticles

New analysis of Cassini data yields insights into Titan's seas

A new study of radar experiment data from the Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn has yielded fresh insights related to the makeup and activity of the liquid hydrocarbon seas near the north pole of Titan, the largest of Saturn's ...

New study reveals oceanic seabirds chase tropical cyclones

A new study published today in Current Biology, "Oceanic Seabirds Chase Tropical Cyclones," reveals that the rare Desertas Petrels (Pterodroma deserta), a wide-ranging seabird in the North Atlantic, exhibit unique foraging ...

Moon 'swirls' could be magnetized by unseen magmas

Lunar swirls are light-colored, sinuous features on the moon's surface, bright enough to be visible from a backyard telescope. Some people think they look like the brushstrokes in an abstract painting. But these are not mere ...

Improving fingerprint detection with carbon-coated nanoparticles

Fingerprint detection is one of the most important techniques in forensic investigation. When fingerprints are dusted with a carbon-based powder, the material will adhere to the moisture and grease left behind by the unique ...

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Surface area

Surface area is the measure of how much exposed area a solid object has, expressed in square units. Mathematical description of the surface area is considerably more involved then the definition of arc length of a curve. For polyhedra (objects with flat polygonal faces) 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 the surface area is based on methods of infinitesimal calculus and involves partial derivatives and double integration.

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.

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