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In everyday life, examples of distance include how far you walk to get to the store, the length of the pool you swim in, or the distance a ball travels when you throw it. Displacement, on the other hand, is the shortest distance between the starting and ending points of an object or person’s movement.
Distance is the measure of “how much ground an object has covered during its motion” while displacement refers to the measure of “how far out of place is an object.” In this article, let us understand the difference between distance and displacement.
You can use the pythagorean theorem to find the distance between any two points on a coordinate plane as part of the distance formula. People are just mentioning that if the sheep hadn't gone West you would've needed to use the distance formula to figure out the displacement of the sheep because it wouldn't have been immediately obvious.
Using a one-dimensional number line to visualize and calculate distance and displacement. Created by Sal Khan.
Distance is a scalar quantity representing the interval between two points. It is just the magnitude of the interval. However, Displacement is a vector quantity and can be defined by using distance concept. It can be defined as distance between the initial point and final point of an object.
For example, the distance the professor walks is 2.0 m . The distance the airplane passenger walks is 4.0 m . It is important to note that the distance traveled does not have to equal the magnitude of the displacement (i.e., distance between the two points).
When you describe distance, you only include the magnitude, the size or amount, of the distance traveled. However, when you describe the displacement, you take into account both the magnitude of the change in position and the direction of movement.
