Question

a car drives 40 miles east, turns around, then drives 30 miles west. (a) Find the distance traveled by the car. (b) find the car’s displacement.

Answer 1

Part A)

Distance is given as sum of total path length

So here as we are given that car drives 40 miles East and 30 miles West

So here the total path length is

$Distance = 40 miles + 30 miles$

$distance = 70 miles$

Part B)

Displacement is given as straight line distance between initial and final position

So here we can see that

$d_1 = 40 miles$ East

$d_2 = 30 miles$ West

Now the total displacement will be

$d = d_1 - d_2 = 40 - 30 = 10 miles$

so the displacement will be 10 miles East