Sign in to view My Badges
 |
  Course: Systems & Structures
|
|
Scale Learn how to determine and describe the scale of your LEGO models. Most LEGO models are "scaled-down" representations of real things. What does this mean? Learn how to determine and describe the scale of your LEGO models in this lesson.  
What is scale?
Look around you at all the things you use every day: a pencil, your bicycle, a car, a LEGO brick. Some of these things are large and some are small but almost all have a scale of 1:1 (pronounced "one-to-one"), meaning they are full-sized. The scale of an item is described as a proportion of human size. For example, at a scale of 1:1, a kids' bicycle should be the right size for a normal-sized kid to ride, a car should be the right size for an average grown-up to fit inside, a pencil should be the right size for a human hand to hold, and so forth. Almost all the creations you build with LEGO elements are "scaled down", meaning that they are smaller versions of whatever they represent, such as cars, boats, houses, and so on. It would be pretty difficult (but not impossible) to build a 1:1 scale (full-sized) car out of LEGO bricks - for one thing, you would need A LOT of bricks. For another, that one LEGO car would take up most of the space in your bedroom! That's why most toys are usually smaller than 1:1 in size. A typical scale for a LEGO car might be 1:27 (pronounced "1 to 27"), meaning that the LEGO car is 1/27th of the size of the original full-sized car. Another way to describe this relationship would be to say the full-sized car is 27 times the size of the LEGO car. You can also "scale up" your models, making them larger than the objects they are meant to represent in your reality. This is most effectively done using subjects that are already small - like a pencil or an insect. When you double the size of an object, its scale increases to 2:1 (pronounced "2 to 1"). Scaling up allows you to add more detail to your model, or to create an exaggerated version of an object.
|
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||
