Calculate the total distance traversed by the car

Draw a diagram showing the car's initial position as a dot, and each movement as a line. Note that the two lines form two sides of a right triangle. Can you use geometry to solve for the hypotenuse of that triangle?

- Warren

 

No, the total displacement is from point A to point Z no matter how many B's or C's or D's you had to go through to get there. They're asking for a straight line change in position from your original point.

Displacement vs. distance transversed is two different things. Displacement is the absolute end result of how far you are from point A. Distance transversed is the actual distance of the path you took during the whole trip.

 

Pengwuino is right. The total distance travelled is just the sum of the 500m and 1200m movements, for a total of 1700m.

The total displacement, however, is the distance between the starting and ending points of the trip, which is smaller than 1700m.

- Warren

 

No, did you draw the diagram?

 

angina,

Positions are two-dimensional in this case; distances, in general, cannot be found by only using a single number.

The original position of the car is (0,0), while the final position is (500, -1200). You need to draw a picture of the path the car takes, and use geometry to find the resulting distance, as we have now said several times.

- Warren

 

distance is scalar. no direction, so just add up those two numbers to get this


however, with displacement youd have to do the pythagorean theorem