Final answer:
The net displacement of a soccer coach pacing between points in a specified duration is the straight-line distance from the start to end point, with its magnitude being the shortest path between these two points and its direction being along this path.
Step-by-step explanation:
The student wants to know the net (total) displacement of a soccer coach who paces from location A to location B to location C to location D, where each leg of the back-and-forth motion takes 3 minutes to complete and the total time is 9 minutes, with the unit of measure being yards.
Displacement, in physics, refers to the change in position of an object. It is a vector quantity, which means it has both magnitude and direction. The magnitude is the shortest distance between the starting and ending point, while the direction is the straight line direction from the start to the end point.
To calculate the net displacement, we would need specific directional information for each leg of the coach's journey. However, given that displacement is the straight-line distance from the starting point to the ending point, if this journey is a round trip where the coach ends up back at the starting point, the net displacement would be zero. If the coach does not end back at the starting point, the net displacement would simply be the straight-line distance from the starting point to the final position.