Tasneem and Padma say that the garden would be closer, while Deepa and Anish feel that the school would be closer, Hardeep thinks that both would be almost at an equal distance. Who do you think is correct?
Answer
All of them are correct. Nobody has made a mistake — each child is simply judging the distance from his or her own house, and the houses are at different places along the road.
Location of the bus stand, the school, the garden and the houses of Deepa and her friends (as in Fig. 5.9).
Child
Where the house is
What they say
Correct?
Deepa, Anish
Nearer the school end of the road
School is closer
Yes
Hardeep
About midway between the two
Both are almost equally far
Yes
Tasneem, Padma
Nearer the garden end of the road
Garden is closer
Yes
Why it happens: a distance is never “just a distance”. It is always a distance from something. Five different starting points give five different — and equally true — answers.
Q2.
Then, why are their observations different?
Answer
Because each of them is using a different reference point — his or her own house. The school and the garden never moved; only the point from which the distances were judged changed.
The moment they all agree to measure from one common point, say the bus stand, their observations become identical:
Measured from
Distance to the school
Distance to the garden
Which is nearer?
Padma's house
Large
Small
Garden
Deepa's house
Small
Large
School
Bus stand (common)
Small
Large
School — for every one of them
This gives the definition the chapter is building towards:
When distance is stated with respect to a fixed object or point,
that point is called a reference point.
Why a reference point is compulsory: without it a statement like “the garden is far” cannot be checked by anyone else. With it — “the garden is 2 km from the bus stand” — every person in the class gets the same answer. This is the same idea as a standard unit, applied to position instead of to length.
Try This: Ask three classmates how far the school gate is from “here”. Then ask them how far it is from the school flag post. The first set of answers will differ; the second set will agree.