Question

What are the distance and the displacement of the race car drivers in completing a path of length $500\,m$ ?

Answer 1

Hint: In order to solve this question we need to understand distance and displacement of a body. So a distance is defined as the total path length covered between initial and final points, it is a scalar quantity and path dependent also.

Complete step by step answer:
Displacement is defined as the shortest path travelled between initial and final points, it is a vector quantity as it has both magnitude and direction also can be added by triangle of vector addition, displacement is path independent, it only depends on initial and final position of the path travelled.

Here we are assuming that the race tracks are circular in nature. So if a driver completes the path then he must start from a point and return to the same point.So distance is equal to total path travelled, hence distance is $d = 500\,m$. But since the car starts from the same point and returns to almost the same point, the displacement of the car turns out to be $\vec D = 0$ because displacement does not depend on path travelled, it only depends on initial and final position.

Note: It should be remembered that here we assume that the race car starts from the same point and returns at the same, this is an ideal case but in reality the racing car stops not exactly at the beginning point but very close to it so displacement is either zero or very close to zero.