Question

A particle is displaced 3m towards East, 4m towards North and then 5m vertical
upwards. Find the displacement of the particle from the initial position.

Answer 1

Displacement is the shortest distance between the initial point to the final point. so when a body moves in such a manner if its path will form two adjacent sides of a triangle, we can find its displacement by finding the hypotenuse by using pythagoras theorem...
if we want to find he distance just add up the lengths ie; 3+9=12.

thus this reveals that displacement can be found only geometricaly but distance algebraically..

Hope this will help you... !!