Quote:
Originally Posted by Ekka 
Imagine a tree with the traditional apple on a stick canopy. Lets say the canopy is 40' diameter like a big ball.
Lets say we want a 25% reduction. So now do we just make it a 30' diameter ball?
Lets look at this.
The formula for calculating surface area of a sphere is 4πr2, however I found an online calculator here Volume and Surface Area of a Sphere - Geometry Calculator
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Now, we want a 25% reduction in canopy surface area.
The answer is 25% x 5027' 2=1257' 2 or leave the tree with a 3770' 2 canopy surface area.
To achieve that we need a 34.64' big ball canopy. |
Nice approach. What is your opinion on this?:
What you described is an "apple on a stick", but your surface-area calculation is more like a "balloon on a stick", with all of the mass on the outside, and nothing but air in the middle.
Because the leaf structure of the tree is spread throughout the canopy, would it better to calculate volume than surface area?