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Surface area of cylinders - 18th sep 2008

In today’s lesson we continued to look at how to calculate the surface area of 3D shapes, concentrating on finding the surface area of cylinders.

To find the surface area of a cylinder we have to understand that if you flatten out a cylinder the shape of the net is made up from two circles (of equal size) that are the ends and a rectangle where the length is the length of the cylinder and the width is the circumference of the circle at the end.

A cylinder like this:

Has a net like this:

So to work out the surface area you find the area of the circle, double it for the two circles. Then find the area of the rectangle and add together all three to find the total surface area.

You can see more explanation and examples on the Mymaths lesson about surface area.