dilation (affine geometry)

In mathematics, a homothety (or homothecy, or homogeneous dilation) is a transformation of an affine space determined by a point S called its center and a nonzero number λ called its ratio, which sends

in other words it fixes S, and sends any M to another point N such that the segment SN is on the same line as SM, but scaled by a factor λ. In Euclidean geometry homotheties are the similarities that fix a point and either preserve (if ) or reverse (if ) the direction of all vectors. Together with the translations, all homotheties of an affine (or Euclidean) space form a group, the group of dilations or homothety-translations. These are precisely the affine transformations with the property that the image of every line L is a line parallel to L.