Scale (ratio)
The scale ratio of a model represents the proportional ratio of a linear dimension of the model to the same feature of the original.
Description
Scale is a measure of proportion.
Scale is a critical factor in many areas of technology, art, and life.
Software development
See Software development and scale.
Examples
Examples include a 3-dimensional scale model of a building or the scale drawings of the elevations or plans of a building.
In such cases the scale is dimensionless and exact throughout the model or drawing.
The scale can be expressed in four ways: in words (a lexical scale), as a ratio, as a fraction and as a graphical (bar) scale. Thus on an architect's drawing one might read 'one centimetre to one metre' or 1:100 or 1/100 and a bar scale would also normally appear on the drawing.
Galileo wrote (in Two New Sciences):
Who does not know that a horse falling from a height of three or four cubits will break his bones, while a dog falling from the same height or a cat from a height of eight or ten cubits will suffer no injury? Equally harmless would be the fall of a grasshopper from a tower or the fall of an ant from the distance of the moon. Do not children fall with impunity from heights which would cost their elders a broken leg or perhaps a fractured skull? And just as smaller animals are proportionately stronger and more robust than the larger, so also smaller plants are able to stand up better than larger.
See also
- Exponentiation
- Fractal
- Golden ratio
- Knudsen number
- Mathematics
- Measurement
- Model
- Power of two
- Proportionality (mathematics)
- Ratio
- Scalability
- Scaling (geometry)
External links
- Scale (ratio) @ Wikipedia
