The magnification of an object is the ratio between its size on a flat surface to its size in reality. So, if an object is 1 cm tall and it appears 5 cm tall on a flat surface, then the magnification would be 5:1. In order to calculate the exact magnification for any given height of an object, you need to divide that height by the height as viewed from infinity (the distance away from which objects appear their natural size). If the object was viewed from infinity, its height would be.
The magnification of that object is still equal to the ratio between its size on a flat surface and how it appears in reality. That means that if you were viewing an object at this distance, then it would appear as big as when it’s seen from up close (because both heights are divided by ). So, even though we can’t see an object at infinity because there isn’t actually such a thing, we use these calculations to approximate what they’d look like under those conditions. The exact magnification for our example is calculated below: = 100%. If we doubled the original height of our image (.0 cm), then increasing it another time.
