Transformation of Shapes

This interactive resource, produced by the University of Leicester, is designed to enable students to explore transformations of shapes including translation by a vector, stretches, rotations around a point, reflection in the axes and reflections in the lines y=x and y=-x.

The first activity draws a parallelogram which is translated by a column vector chosen by the student.

The second activity investigates stretching the parallelogram in the x direction and in the y direction.

In the third activity, the student is asked to choose a centre of rotation. A parallelogram can then be rotated through 360 degrees in an anti-clockwise direction using a slider.

In the fourth activity, a square is drawn. This square is then reflected in either the x axis or the y axis. There then follows two further activities in which a square is reflected in the line x=a, then y=a, in each case a being determined by the student and an activity in which the square is reflected in y=x and y=-x.

The final activity is an investigation of enlargement with a square being enlarged by a scale factor from a point of enlargement. The student can choose where to draw the square, the centre of enlargement and the scale factor. The scale factor can be positive, negative and decimal.