A dilation stretches or shrinks a figure by a scale factor relative to a fixed center point. The scale factor is the ratio of the length of a side of the image to the corresponding side of the original figure. A scale factor greater than 1 results in an enlargement, while a scale factor between 0 and 1 results in a reduction. Under coordinate notation, a dilation transforms each point (x,y) to (kx, ky) where k is the scale factor. Diagrams show that for a dilation centered at the origin, the point and its image always lie on the same ray from the origin.