Saturday 3 July 2010

Magnification & Dilation

The concept of magnification is at the heart of the reducing fraction dilemma. But care is called for as this concept exists as two independent ideas - one in mathematics and the other in optical science. This is confusing and applying a mathematical definition of magnification directly to optical science can be misleading. For clarity magnification in mathematics should be referred to by the technically more correct term dilation and the word magnification reserved for optical science.