the.com/sound wave
Air gossiping in rhythm until your eardrum overhears it.
means A vibration that travels through a medium (like air or water) as repeating pressure changes, carrying sound from its source to your ear.
from 'Sound' traces back to Old English 'sund', tangled up with Latin 'sonus' (to sound or resound), while 'wave' comes from Old English 'wafian', meaning to move back and forth like water or a waving hand. The phrase itself is a 19th-century scientific coinage, once physicists realized sound wasn't a substance shooting through the air but a disturbance rippling through it — the same math describing ocean swells turned out to describe the air shuddering between a voice and an ear.
- needs medium
- cannot travel through vacuum, space is silent
- motion type
- pushes molecules, doesn't carry them along
- speed boost
- travels faster in water than in air
- human range
- ears catch roughly 20 to 20000 hertz