find the displacement of a pizza delivery car that drives 3km to work and then 4km to deliver a pizza

Question

find the displacement of a pizza delivery car that drives 3km to work and then 4km to deliver a pizza

if after his shift he returns home what is his displacement

Answer 1

Hello!

So we have a Pizza car that drove 3km to work, 4km to deliver a pizza, and then drove back home. The trick to this question is understanding displacement vs distance. Distance refers to the total distance traveled, while displacement only wants to know how far you end from your starting point.

The formula for displacement is |Starting Location - Ending Location|=Displacement. So we have |Home-Home|=Displacement. The distance from home to home is 0km, so his displacement is 0km.