Affine geometry in the context of "Scaling (geometry)"

In mathematics, non-Euclidean geometry consists of two geometries based on axioms closely related to those that specify Euclidean geometry. As Euclidean geometry lies at the intersection of metric geometry and affine geometry, non-Euclidean geometry arises by either replacing the parallel postulate with an alternative, or consideration of quadratic forms other than the definite quadratic forms associated with metric geometry. In the former case, one obtains hyperbolic geometry and elliptic geometry, the traditional non-Euclidean geometries. When isotropic quadratic forms are admitted, then there are affine planes associated with the planar algebras, which give rise to kinematic geometries that have also been called non-Euclidean geometry.

In geometry, a straight line, usually abbreviated line, is an infinitely long object with no width, depth, or curvature. It is a special case of a curve and an idealization of such physical objects as a straightedge, a taut string, or a ray of light. Lines are spaces of dimension one, which may be embedded in spaces of dimension two, three, or higher. The word line may also refer, in everyday life, to a line segment, which is a part of a line delimited by two points (its endpoints).

Euclid's Elements defines a straight line as a "breadthless length" that "lies evenly with respect to the points on itself", and introduced several postulates as basic unprovable properties on which the rest of geometry was established. Euclidean line and Euclidean geometry are terms introduced to avoid confusion with generalizations introduced since the end of the 19th century, such as non-Euclidean, projective, and affine geometry.

In geometry, parallel lines are coplanar infinite straight lines that do not intersect at any point. Parallel planes are infinite flat planes in the same three-dimensional space that never meet. In three-dimensional Euclidean space, a line and a plane that do not share a point are also said to be parallel. However, two noncoplanar lines are called skew lines. Line segments and Euclidean vectors are parallel if they have the same direction or opposite direction (not necessarily the same length).

Parallel lines are the subject of Euclid's parallel postulate. Parallelism is primarily a property of affine geometries and Euclidean geometry is a special instance of this type of geometry.In some other geometries, such as hyperbolic geometry, lines can have analogous properties that are referred to as parallelism.The concept can also be generalized to non-straight parallel curves and non-flat parallel surfaces, which keep a fixed minimum distance and do not touch each other or intersect.

In mathematics, a fractal is a geometric shape containing detailed structure at arbitrarily small scales, usually having a fractal dimension strictly exceeding the topological dimension. Many fractals appear similar at various scales, as illustrated in successive magnifications of the Mandelbrot set. This exhibition of similar patterns at increasingly smaller scales is called self-similarity, also known as expanding symmetry or unfolding symmetry; if this replication is exactly the same at every scale, as in the Menger sponge, the shape is called affine self-similar. Fractal geometry relates to the mathematical branch of measure theory by their Hausdorff dimension.

One way that fractals are different from finite geometric figures is how they scale. Doubling the edge lengths of a filled polygon multiplies its area by four, which is two (the ratio of the new to the old side length) raised to the power of two (the conventional dimension of the filled polygon). Likewise, if the radius of a filled sphere is doubled, its volume scales by eight, which is two (the ratio of the new to the old radius) to the power of three (the conventional dimension of the filled sphere). However, if a fractal's one-dimensional lengths are all doubled, the spatial content of the fractal scales by a power that is not necessarily an integer and is in general greater than its conventional dimension. This power is called the fractal dimension of the geometric object, to distinguish it from the conventional dimension (which is formally called the topological dimension).

In mathematics, an affine space is a geometric structure that generalizes some of the properties of Euclidean spaces in such a way that these are independent of the concepts of distance and measure of angles, keeping only the properties related to parallelism and ratio of lengths for parallel line segments. Affine space is the setting for affine geometry.

As in Euclidean space, the fundamental objects in an affine space are called points, which can be thought of as locations in the space without any size or shape: zero-dimensional. Through any pair of points an infinite straight line can be drawn, a one-dimensional set of points; through any three points that are not collinear, a two-dimensional plane can be drawn; and, in general, through k + 1 points in general position, a k-dimensional flat or affine subspace can be drawn. Affine space is characterized by a notion of pairs of parallel lines that lie within the same plane but never meet each-other (non-parallel lines within the same plane intersect in a point). Given any line, a line parallel to it can be drawn through any point in the space, and the equivalence class of parallel lines are said to share a direction.