Let’s start with a brief test to see what you remember about position, distance and displacement. Answer the following three questions in your Science notebook. Use only one sentence for each answer. Use your own words and good English.
1. Write down what you believe to be the most important point about the word ‘position’.
2. Write down what you understand to be the essential difference between ‘distance’ and ‘displacement’.
3. To which word – ‘distance’ or ‘displacement’ – does the term ‘route dependent’ apply?
Position coordinates: The Cartesian plane …show more content…
The word comes from the name of a famous Frenchman, Rene Descartes (1596–1650). His surname is pronounced ‘Day-cart’. Descartes was a philosopher and mathematician. We would now also call him a scientist, but that word was not used in those days. ‘Natural philosophy’ was the field of study that we now call ‘science’. One of the problems that Descartes thought about deeply was how he could be sure he existed. This is a philosophical rather than a scientific question because it is one that you cannot investigate by any scientific method. In particular, you can’t make any measurements to explore or answer the