volume of the -sphere
The volume contained inside , the -sphere (or hypersphere), isgiven by the integral
Going to polar coordinates () this becomes
The first integral is the integral over all solid angles subtended by thesphere and is equal to its area,where is the gamma function.The second integral is elementary and evaluates to.
Finally, the volume is
If the sphere has radius instead of , then the correct volume is.
Note that this formula works for . The first few cases are
-
, hence (this is thelength of the interval
in );
-
, hence (this is the familiarresult for the area of the unit circle);
-
, hence (this is the familiar result for the volume of the sphere);
-
, hence .