A surveyor starts at the southeast corner of a lot and charts the following displacements a equals 700 m n b equals 400 m w c equals 145 m s and d equals 100 m e what is the net displacement?

Answer 1

If we look at the net Northern first, he goes 700 m N and 145 m S so that's 555 N.

Then if we look at the westerly direction, he goes 400 m W and 100 m E so that's a net of 300 m W.

So those are the N and E net displacements, to find the overall displacement we'd use Pythagorus to work out the direct line.

So 555^2 + 300^2 = total displacement^2

308,025 + 90,000 = 398025

total displacement = square root(398,025) = 630.9 m.