10-2

10-2 (Taylor Husted, p7) Today in class, we learned about position, displacement, and distance. We finished a short lab on these three categories, establishing our knowledge about them. The position, or x, of an object is found by measuring the amount of meters away from the reference point, typically 0 m. Unlike distance this number can be negative. For example, if I stood 17 meters to the left of the reference point, 0 m, then my position would be -17 m. The second vocabulary word we learned about was displacement, or Λx. The displacement is basically how far one has moved from the starting point. So you only look at the end result of placement. If one starts at -8 m moves around and then ends up at -8, the final displacement would be 0 meters. This is because the starting point is the same as the ending point. Another example would be if you started at 4 m, moved to 8 m, then to 10 m, and then -10 m. This final displacement would be 8 m. It is easy to figure out the displacement by simply sketching a picture of the subject. Distance, our third vocab word, which has no symbol, is the length of the path taken. So you add up the distances from point a to point b and point b to point c, etc and then you will have the final distance. For instance, if you started at 0 m, moved to -4 m, then moved to 3 m, the final distance would be 7 m.

In the example below, the stick figure starts out at a position of 1, then he moves to 2m, and then down to -2 m. His final displacement would be 3 meters, and his final distance traveled would be 5 meters.