High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! 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 than 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.