Right Cylinder Calculator: find A, V, A_l, A_b
This right cylinder calculator finds A (area), V (volume), A_l (lateral area), and A_b (base area) of a right cylinder.
The formula
V = πr²h, A = 2πr(r + h)
Volume scales with the cube
Double every length and the surface area quadruples while the volume grows eightfold. This is why doubling a container’s dimensions gives eight times the capacity but only four times the material — and why scaling models up rarely works the way intuition suggests.
The one-third family
Cones and pyramids are always exactly one third of the prism or cylinder that would enclose them, whatever the base shape. A sphere sits at two thirds of its enclosing cylinder — the result Archimedes asked to have carved on his tomb.
Units
Enter every dimension in the same unit; volume comes out cubed and surface area squared. If you work in centimetres, one litre is 1,000 cm³, which is why the capacity row is shown on the box and cylinder pages.