Question

A balloon drifts 50 m toward the east in 6 s; then the wind suddenly changes and the balloon flies 30 m toward the west in the next 5 s. What was the balloon's total displacement?

Answer 1

Displacement of an object is equal to distance from starting point to end point.

Let's use positive numbers for movement towards east and negative numbers fro movements towards west. First movement is +50m, second movement is -30m. We add these numbers to find displacement.

`d=+50m-30m \\ d=20m`

Total displacement is 20m towards east.