Understanding Dilations
Contributed By
PBS Learning Media
Understanding Dilations
In this video, learn how photographers use dilations to print the same photograph in larger or smaller sizes. In the accompanying classroom activity, students consider how dilation is a geometric application of scale factor. After a brief refresher on scale, students watch the video. Then, they apply what they have learned by creating larger and smaller dilations of a picture, using the coordinate plane as their canvas. Students consider how both scale factor and the center of dilation influence the size and placement of the drawings they make.