Question

If John walks 10 m to the right, 6m to the left, 2m to the right, and then 9m to the left.What is the total distance, and the total displacement of John after all these movements.

Answer 1

Answer: Total Distance: 27 meters

Displacement: -3 meters or 3 meters to the left.

Explanation: Total distance means the total distance John traveled. In this case we can add up all the movements he made. This would be:

10+6+2+9 = 27 meters.

Displacement is the distance from the starting point after all the steps. The best way to think of this is moving left as negative and right as positive. This means

10 - 6 + 2 - 9 = -3 meters.

This means from his original starting point, he is 3 meters from the left of it after all the movements.

Hope this helped!