Position, Distance & Displacement

Topic Content:

Position:

The position of an object describes its location relative to a chosen reference point or origin. On a Cartesian coordinate system, the position of a point can be represented by coordinates (x, y).

For example, consider the two points:

Q = (2, 3) and P = (4, 5)

On a Cartesian coordinate system, the horizontal axis is the x-axis and the vertical axis is the y-axis. A suitable scale is chosen for both axes.

To locate Q = (2, 3), move 2 units along the x-axis and 3 units along the y-axis. Similarly, P = (4, 5) is