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Displacement in physics refers to the change in position of an object from its initial point to its final point. It's also essential to recognize that displacement does not consider the path taken between these points; it only considers the straight line, or the shortest path, connecting them.

Imagine you're watching a duck in a pond, and it swims from one bank to another directly across from its starting point. If you draw a straight line from its start to end points, the length of that line is the displacement. However, if the duck decides to swim back to its starting point, its displacement is zero, because it ends up exactly where it started. Even if it swam in a large circle or a complicated pattern, as long as it ends back at the start, the displacement is zero.

The concept of displacement is essential in solving physics problems, as it provides clearer insights into an object's overall motion and its position with respect to time. Displacement is a vector quantity; it includes both magnitude and direction.

A vector quantity is any quantity in physics that has both magnitude and direction. Displacement, velocity, and force are examples of vector quantities. These differ from scalar quantities, like mass, temperature, and time, which have magnitude only and no direction.

For instance, saying '10 meters' is not sufficient for a vector quantity like displacement; you also need to specify a direction (e.g., 10 meters north). If you watch two ducks swimming, one moving 5 meters east and another 5 meters west, although they've both covered the same distance (magnitude), their displacements as vector quantities are not the same due to their opposite directions.

Understanding vector quantities is crucial in physics as it helps illustrate physical phenomena accurately. For something to have no average velocity, a vector quantity, its displacement or change in position, another vector quantity, must also be zero, emphasizing the relationship between two or more vectors.

The time interval in physics is the duration between two events or two specific points in time. For example, the time interval could be the seconds ticking by on a stopwatch as a duck swims across the pond. It is a scalar quantity, meaning it has magnitude but no direction.

Time intervals play a fundamental role when calculating quantities like average velocity, where the total displacement over an object’s path is considered within a specific time interval. In our scenario with the duck, if it starts swimming at 2 pm and reaches the other side of the pond at 2:05 pm, the time interval is 5 minutes. For velocity, the direction is irrelevant; time is just the 'how long'.

Regardless of the path taken, it is the change in time that gives meaning to other physics concepts like velocity and acceleration. It is crucial to differentiate between the time interval and the concept of displacement as one is a vector and the other a scalar, showing how both types of quantities can interact in physical calculations.