Surface Areas of Cylinders
Surface area is a two-dimensional property of a three-dimensional figure. Cylinders are similar to prisms in that they have congruent, parallel bases, except cylinders have circles as their bases. To conceptualize surface area of cylinders, we can imagine that the lateral area of a cylinder can be "unrolled" into a rectangle with one side equaling the circumference of the circle and the other side equal to the height of the cylinder (unless it is oblique).