Question

Mary starts from her house, walks 80 meters south, and stops to chat with her aunt on the sidewalk. After chatting for a few minutes, she walks 125 meters to the west to meet a friend and then walks 45 meters north with her friend to a cafe for lunch. Overall, she takes 10 minutes to do all this. What is Mary’s average speed?

Answer 1

Average speed = (total distance covered) / (time to cover the distance)

Total distance = (80m) + (125m) + (45m) = 250 meters

Overall time = 10 minutes

Average speed = (250 meters) / (10 minutes)

Average speed = 25 meters/minute

Since we're only looking for average speed and not velocity, we don't care about any of the directions, and we don't need to calculate Mary's displacement.