Video Transcript
A car is at the center of a
circle. The arrows show paths that the car
could travel to reach the circumference of the circle. Is the distance moved the same for
both paths? (A) Yes or (B) no.
This question is asking us, if the
car traveled along the blue path or the red path, would the distance traveled be the
same? To answer this question, consider
each arrow. See that both arrows originate from
the same point, the exact center of the circle. Then each arrow carves a path
through the circle all the way to some point on the circumference of the circle. They don’t end up at the same point
on the circle but travel in different directions.
Nevertheless, since each arrow
reaches from the center to the circumference, the length of each arrow is the
same. In fact, the length of each arrow
is equal to the radius of the circle. This means that the distance the
car would travel on the blue path is the same as the distance it would travel on the
red path. The distance is equal to the radius
of the circle. Since we are discussing distance
and not displacement, the directions of the paths are irrelevant. All we care about is the magnitude
of the path. We can therefore conclude that the
correct answer is option (A), yes.
