Video Transcript
Explain why 25 meters is not a
displacement.
25 meters is the length of some
path that’s traveled. Say, for example, that that path
starts here. 25 meters could look like this. But then this path also is 25
meters, so is this one, and so on. We see that 25 meters doesn’t tell
us which path we follow, just that it’s 25 meters long. A displacement is different. Every displacement includes a
length, like 25 meters, as well as a direction. To identify the displacement of
this path, we might say 25 meters to the right, while this displacement would be 25
meters up. By itself, 25 meters doesn’t tell
us a direction. For our answer, we’ll write that it
is not stated what direction the 25 meters is in. This is why it is not a
displacement.
