What are the differences between distance and displacement?

Answer 1

• displacement is the distance and direction from the starting point to wherever you stopped.

  distance is how much you traveled to get there. if you went back and forth 20 times that's your distance. that does not effect your displacement in the least.

  My Answer: Distance is the total length of the actual path between two points. Displacement is the length and direction of a straight line between starting and ending points.

and other answer :

distance

• the actual length or path between two position is a scalar called distance.
• it is represented by "s" or "D"
• its dimension is [L]

displacement

• the shortest distance between two positions in a straight line is a vector called displacement.
• it is represented by "S" OR "D"
• its dimension is [L] and it includes a direction

Answer 2

Distance is the distance travelled by an object from its initial point to final point.

Say a point A is initial and a point B is final and the distance between them is

10m and an object moves from initial point to final point and the distance travelled

is 10m.

Displacement is the shortest distance between the initial and the final point.

Say a point A is initial and a point B is final and the distance between them is 10m .

The object moves from A to B and again from B to A. therefore the displacement

of the object is 0 because from A it came back to A itself. The shortest distance

from initial to final point is 0.

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Completely correct, but hard to follow unless you already know where it's headed.

Easier:

-- "Displacement" is the length between the start- and end-points, regardless of

the route you take to get there.

-- "Distance" is the total road you travel to get from the start point to the end point,

including all the winds, curves, twists, circles and side-trips along the way.

-- Distance can never be shorter than displacement for the same start- and end-points.

-- If you end the trip at the same point you started from, like for example running one lap

around a closed track, then the distance is something, but the displacement is zero.

Answer 3

Distance is the total length of the path traveled by an object, while displacement is the change in position of the object from its initial to final point in a straight line. Distance is a scalar quantity, whereas displacement is a vector quantity that includes both magnitude and direction.