Question

You walk six blocks east along 12th Street, then three blocks west, then one block east, then six blocks east, then seven blocks west. Let the x axis point east and have its origin at your starting point. If all blocks are equal in size, what is the x component of your displacement, in blocks?

Answer 1

Displacement depends upon the path taken as it is a vector.

From your problem above we would have a total displacement of;
Defining +x direction as east and -x direction as west

6east-3west+1east+6east-7west

6-3+1+6-7=3 blocks east or + x-direction

So even though they walked a total of 17 blocks it ends up only being 3 blocks total in +xdirection that was travelled by displacement.

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