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[Dunamisdeos]

I need to know: what is the total interior surface area of the human body?

It's important, and I can't find this info in the internet for some reason. Also just so no-one worries, it's not for some kind of grade or assignment that I'm trying to cheat on etc. I just need to know.

Help please! Estimations are fine.

[Strife26]

I mean, it's pretty significant in comparison to the external surface area, but I have no idea how you'd find a number for that. There's so many different ways to define internal surface area, even besides differing human sizes, that a useful number isn't available.

[Flying Dice]

Kill someone, skin them, remove all bones, internal organs, nerves, muscle groups, &c. and measure the surface area of each, then sum up the total. Repeat until you have a statistically significant number of cases. Be sure to not let the police catch you before you publish.

^{_{Note: Don't actually do that.}}

[TheDarkStar]

Here's what I get from a quick Google search:

Lower bound: Surface area of the outside of a human = about 1.75 m²
Upper bound: Surface area of every single cell in your body = (4pi(0.000025 m)² / cell) * (6x10¹² cells) = about 470000 m²

[Starver]

Probably the biggest component of 'internal surface area' (by which I assume you mean anywhere that is within a body cavity whether you close it off from the outside by a pliable sphincter or not, thus not including vein/artery/capilliary 'internal surface' that is equally accurately the external surface of the blood) is probably the lungs.

I've heard their 'surface area' quoted as on the scale of a tennis-court, but that is just from memory and I'm not sure how topologically rigorous that estimate was even in its original form.  But, by comparison, the nine metres or so of human intestines/GI tract is for the most part very small in diameter so can't add much more 'surface' unless it is amazingly 'ribbed' to a fractal degree in parts (which I doubt, at least where solids would gum up such works rather than extrude fairly freely through).

So perhaps, if I have made the right assumptions, you could verify my half-remembered thoughts regarding the lungs and use  that as your majority quantity when you confirm some figure useful to your desired context.

[Dunamisdeos]

Thank you everyone! These answers are sufficient to answer my overarching question!

If the total number of automatic auto-responses that a certain online shopping company has sent to my email over the past 1.5 months were to be printed out and made into 8x1 inch slips of paper (the approximate text-only size of the reply on my screen), there could indeed be enough room for them to fully cover the interior of their body cavity, and indeed 6.4 times over.

While this is a rough estimate based on the lungs being the largest organ on the body with the most surface area, this means that they could indeed (provided they made it a team effort) shove all of these emails physically up their collective ass.

[BFEL]

This is beautiful

[My Name is Immaterial]

This is what the internet was made for.

[Starver]

And porn.  Which, given Rule 34 Of The Internet, is probably the same thing for a non-zero number of suitably inclined fetishists.

[Dunamisdeos]

HEY NOW. This is NOT a thread about porn.

Now, if you want to find out exactly how many porno DVDs could fit inside of the average labradoodle's lungs (within a rough mathematical estimate), then this is your thread.

We have standards after all.