A bead is confined to slide along a taut string. It moves 80 cm to the right from its starting point, then reverses its motion and moves to the left 30 cm before resuming its motion to the right by an additional 50 cm. How far is the bead from its starting point? What is its displacement? What is the path length traversed?

Question

anonymous · Answer

The displacement is how far its end position is from its beginning position.

Its path length is the sum of the path lengths, all treated as positive values.