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? Yes or no.
We see that for both the blue and
the red arrows, the start and end point of these arrows is the same. However, the red arrow, because it
is curved, indicates a longer path between these points. The distance between two points is
defined as the length of the path traveled between them. Since the red path is longer than
the blue path, the distance moved is not the same for both paths.
Now that we know what distance is,
let’s move on to displacement. Once again, we have our start and
end points. The pink arrow indicates the
displacement from start to end. The length of the arrow tells the
magnitude or size of the displacement, and the direction of the arrow indicates the
direction of travel. Both a magnitude and a direction
are needed to define displacement. This means that displacement is a
vector. It’s the straight-line distance
between two points in the direction of travel.
