Question

Alex walks along a curved path and takes several turns while walking from home to school. How can you best describe his displacement ?

Answer 1

Hint:Distance and displacement are two quantities that appear to mean the same thing but have very different meanings and definitions. Distance is defined as "how much ground an object has covered during its motion," whereas displacement is defined as "how far out of place is an object."

Complete answer:
When an object moves relative to a reference frame (for example, if a professor moves to the right of a whiteboard or a passenger moves toward the back of an airplane), the object's position changes. This shift in position is referred to as displacement. The term "displacement" suggests that an object has moved or been displaced.

Displacement is defined as a change in an object's position. It is a vector quantity with a magnitude and a direction. It is represented by an arrow pointing from the starting point to the ending point. For instance, if an object moves from A to B, the object's position changes. Displacement is the term used to describe a change in the position of an object.

The following equation can be used to define it mathematically:
\[{{\Delta }_{x}}~=~{{x}_{f}}~-~{{x}_{o,}}\]
As we have seen, Displacement is represented by a vector. This means it has a direction as well as a magnitude and is visually represented as an arrow pointing from the starting point to the ending point. So, in the above question, to define displacement we need both: the distance traveled and the direction but in the above question it is not provided thus, we can’t describe his displacement.

Note:When discussing the motion of a rigid body, the term displacement may also include the body's rotations. In this case, the displacement of a body particle is referred to as linear displacement (displacement along a straight line), whereas the rotation of the body is referred to as angular displacement.