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Name: Unknown
Status: N/A
Age: N/A
Location: N/A
Country: N/A
Date: Around 1993
Question:
I have wondered for some time why the symbol "s" is commonly used to represent the quantity "displacement."


Replies:
I have looked around and cannot find out where this started. It might be so simple as the fact that s is close to v and t which both appear in distance formulas. Lots of expressions have letters from similar parts of the alphabet as a way of recognizing copying errors. It may also be German. I will be look into this a little bit later. I note that in the math literature when the length of a line is mentioned it is often called s. Again I do not know of any reason. Many of these conventions are very old and often limited to a particular audience.

Sam Bowen


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