Referring to Figure, you walk from your home to the library, then to the park.
(a) What is the distance traveled? (b) What is your displacement?
Answer:
The distance is defined as a scalar quantity which is equal to how much ground that an object covered during its overall motion. The displacement is a vector quantity which is defined as how far an object travelled from its initial position.
The distance measures the actual path of an object that takes in its motion and displacement measures the overall distance from the initial and final position of the object.
(a)
The distance d travelled by the person from house to library is equal to the overall path length from house to park.
Here,
, is the distance from house to park, 
is the distance from park to library, and 
is the distance from library to park.
(b)
The displacement of the person is equal to the distance between initial and final position of the person. Thus, the displacement of the person is just equal to the distance between house and part.
