If an object has a displacement function #s(t)=t-ln(2t+1)# where #t# is in seconds and #t>=0#, can you find the distance travelled in the first 2 seconds?
1 Answer
Explanation:
Displacement is given by:
We can see that the change in displacement (the vector quantity that measures spatial differences) during the period
But that is not necessarily the distance (the scalar quantity that measures spatial differences) travelled by the object in
Solving the displacement equation looks tricky, ie we need to solve:
I am not sure how you do that simply, so, despite the Pre-Calc classification, from calculus , we can see that velocity is:
So, just to make it clear:
To obtain the distance travelled, we need to look at the displacements at these 3 points:
So the distance