Mission KC2 Distance and Displacement
Hold down the T key for 3 seconds to activate the audio accessibility mode, at which point you can click the K key to pause and resume audio. Useful for the Check Your Understanding and See Answers.
A football coach starts at the 10-yard line (A) and walks to the 40-yard line (B). He turns around and walks to the 0-yard line (C). He turns around again and walks back to the 50-yard line (D). He turns around once more and walks back to the 25-yard line (E), thus completing his 10 minutes of pacing. The coach's overall distance is ____.
Distance is a scalar quantity which is ignorant of the direction of travel and any changes in direction. Suppose that a person walks 12 meters, east and then 4 meters, west. The distance traveled is 16 meters. The fact that there was a direction change is irrelevant to any measurement of the distance. The numerical value for the individual distances of each leg of the trip are simply added together as numbers.
Most physics teachers would never think of answering this question without writing something down. You will have to add four numbers together to determine the result. The numbers which are added are the individual distance values for each leg of the trip. The mathematics is simple addition; but by the time you determine the distance for the third leg of the trip, you could easily forget what the sum of the first two legs of the trip was. It would be a bright idea to write the numbers down in an organized fashion.
