Thomas and Lilian are walking down the street to get to the corner store. They walk 5 blocks up the street and turn right by the stop sign. Once they turn at the stop sign they continue walking for 8 more blocks. They make a left, walk 2 blocks and cross the street to arrive at the corner store. While there they purchase a few snacks, sit at the curb, and then walk back home where they originally started. Thomas and Lilian are discussing their walk in reference to their overall displacement and distance. They seem to be in disagreement about their journey. Thomas says their overall displacement and distance are both zero, because they are back where they started. Lilian thinks their total distance and displacement are greater than zero.

Which person do you most agree with?
You are not expected to actually calculate in order to solve this problem.

The displacement is a vector, that is, it has a modulation and direction, in this case we can draw a vector for the outward trip and another vector for the return trip, both will have the same magnitude, but their directions are opposite, so the resulting vector is zero.

The distance is a scalar and its value coincides with the modulus of the distance vector, in our case the distance is d for the outward journey and d for the return journey, so the total distance is 2d, which is different from zero.

The two students have some reason, but neither complete,

The displacement is zero because it is a vector and

the distance is different from zero (2d) because it is a scalar

Thomas is correct that the zero displacements

Lilian is right that the distance is greater than zero.

Therefore I agree with both, because each one has a 50% of the reason