Enlargement
Enlargement means to make bigger. en- means ‘to cause to be’, large means ‘of relatively great size’ and -ment means ‘the action of’.
En-large-ment means ‘the action of causing something to be relatively great in size’.
In mathematics enlargement isn’t quite like the dictionary definition. It is more like a multiplication. An enlargement could get bigger or smaller. Or stay the same.
I mean, if you multiple a number by one, it stays the same. Same thing with enlargements.
If you multiply a number by a number larger than one then the result is a larger number. Same with enlargements.
If you multiply a number by a number between zero and one then the result is a smaller number. Same thing with enlargements.
Scale factor
A scale factor is a number that multiplies or scales some object.
To scale some object means to increase or decrease an object’s size.
Enlarging a shape
We are going to enlarge square ABCD below by a scale factor of two
We double the length of each side of the square
Square A’B’C’D’ has sides of length 2
If we enlarged ABCD by a scale factor or 0.5 then the result would be A’B’C’D’ shown here.
