Distance and Displacement

What is Distance?

It is the ground covered during the actual motion.

What is Displacement?

Its it the shortest distance betweeen 2 points.

What is the difference between Distance and Displacement?

The image above should give you an idea. You might take a meandering path to your school from home. Distance is the measure of the blue line in the image and displacement is the black line - the shortest path. The measure of distance is greater or equal to the measure of distance. Meter(m) is the unit of measurement of both distance and displacement. Distance is a scalar while displacement is a vector.

What are scalars and vectors?

A scalar quantity can be fully described using a number. For example - Distance travelled by Jane is 150 meters. It just means that Jane walked for 150 meters. Whereas for a vector you need to talk about the direction to fully describe it. For example - Displacement is 100m in the north direction.

This is why when talking about displacement you need to tell the direction of displacement and the direction is sometimes represented by an arrow.