Surface Area and Volume of Spheres: Introduction

Basketball

I’m sure you have all seen some sort of ball before, perhaps even shot a few hoops or hit a few baseballs?  Have you ever had a flat ball that you had to put air into?  As you add air (volume), the ball gets bigger.  The material the ball is made of can stretch only to a certain size (surface area).  In this section, we are going to study spheres and see the relationship between the surface area and volume of a sphere.  In previous lessons, the figures we worked with had at least one flat side.  Spheres, on the other hand, do not have any flat sides.  Because of this, we can’t “unfold” the sides and lay the sphere flat.  Instead, we will learn specific formulas to calculate the surface area and volume.