I spilled coffee on my shirt in the process and blah blah blah …” Then an officer pulled me over because I was such in a hurry, I couldn’t keep to my lane … and I also almost ran over a stray dog, but veered just to in time to avoid him. “I left my house at around 7:15 am and took ‘route X’, then I realised it was jammed so I had to backtrack and catch the freeway before it was too late. Your friend was probably expecting an account like this: What they want to know is how that happened. Your friend probably knows where you live, and they know that you had to drive so and so distance in so and so direction to get to work. You need more information to stuff it up. Journeys cannot be completely specified by magnitude and direction only. Then you stop right there, and add nothing. Suppose after arriving to work one morning, your colleague/friend asks you, “ Hey, how was your drive to the office today?” to which you reply, “ I started at my house and drove 10 miles northeast to get here”. Are journeys completely specified by magnitude and direction only? Vectors are entities completely specified by magnitude and direction only. Let’s start by defining vectors and check whether journeys (or a drive) fit the requirements. In fact, let’s call this transfer “ a teleportation” – because why not! Journeys are not vectors? But this drive that we are talking about here has none of that – making it akin to teleportation. See, we tend to associate “a drive” or “a journey” with the experiences we encounter along the way. The problem is, this won’t feel like a drive at all. Let us just focus on the abstract fact that you started your journey at home and made it to the concert – making it no different whatsoever had you teleported there. And let us ignore how long it took you, or how many difficulties and inconveniences you may have run into on the way there. Therefore, you may drive an hour and still not arrive at the concert.īut suppose you indeed arrive at the concert at last. Unless you are driving a tank, you will most likely be changing directions. All roads, even freeways hardly keep to a straight path. In practice, we drive in all sorts of directions. That’s a good point – if direction were unchanging. You might say it depends on the direction you take. Excitedly, you hop into your car and drive for an hour. Suppose on one boring Saturday afternoon, you learn that, your favorite rock band is playing just an hour drive from your house. But what exactly does this statement mean?įor that, let’s take a road trip. Displacement is usually defined as a vector that relates the final position of an object relative to its initial position.
0 kommentar(er)
