+44 votes
in Sound Waves by
edited by

Your answer

Your name to display (optional):
Privacy: Your email address will only be used for sending these notifications.
+27 votes
by (2.8k points)

Sound is a form of energy that travels in the form of waves. In general, sound requires a medium, such as air, water, or solids, to propagate. However, sound waves cannot travel through the vacuum of space because it lacks a medium for transmission.

When a sound is produced, such as a person speaking or a musical instrument playing, it creates vibrations in the surrounding medium. For example, if you speak in a room, the vibrations from your vocal cords create compressions and rarefactions in the air molecules around you. These compressions and rarefactions form a sound wave that propagates through the air.

In the case of air, sound waves travel by the particles of air colliding with each other. The air particles in the vicinity of the sound source become compressed, creating a region of high pressure called a compression. As the particles move apart, they create a region of low pressure called a rarefaction. These alternating compressions and rarefactions propagate outward from the source, carrying the energy of the sound wave with them.

So, in a sense, you can think of sound waves as "surfing" on the air. As the sound wave travels through the air, it transfers its energy to adjacent air particles, which then pass on the energy to their neighboring particles, and so on. This transfer of energy allows sound to propagate through the medium.

However, in the vacuum of space, there are no particles or molecules to transmit the sound waves. Therefore, sound cannot travel through space without a medium present.

Welcome to Physicsgurus Q&A, where you can ask questions and receive answers from other members of the community.
...