80x60 to 500x375

Question

The space allowed for the mascot on a school's Web page is 80 pixels wide by 60 pixels high. Its digital image is 500 pixels wide by 375 pixels high. What is the largest image of the mascot that will fit on the Web page?

Answer 1

When scaling a picture (up or down), you must multiply each dimension (height and width) by the same quantity or factor. In cases where what you're trying to scale to and what you already have aren't the same shape, one of the dimensions will have too small for the frame, while the other fits perfectly. Then you will have to determine which dimension must fit perfectly in order for the other to be less than or equal to the smaller scale dimension.

But the first step is to see if the the two spaces are the same shape. To do this, we can simply check the ratio of the two dimensions to each other for each space:

 

500:375 = 4:3

80:60 =4:3

 

Since the two are in fact the same shape, we can scale both dimensions down to an exact fit using a factor of 6.25.