What is the actual difference between speed and velocity?

Speed and velocity are both about how fast something moves, but they tell us different things.

Speed is like how many steps you take in a minute, it doesn’t care where you're going, just how quickly you move. Velocity, on the other hand, is more like knowing not only how many steps you take, but also whether you’re moving toward your friend’s house or away from it.

You run around the track and come back to where you started, that's a lot of movement! But if you ran all the way to the slide, your speed was high because you moved fast. However, your velocity changed because you went from one place to another.

If a toy car zooms around in circles on your floor, its speed is always high, it’s moving quickly! But its velocity keeps changing because it's going different directions every time it turns.

So, speed is how fast you go, and velocity tells you where you're headed too.