If I make a bunch of waves on a pond, they all crash into each other and lose their identity. Why don't all...

Question

... the hundreds or thousands of different radio waves out there crash into each other and do the same?

Answer 1

Because the medium is different, the size of the "pond" is much larger than the waves, and radio waves are at different frequencies. And, even the nature of the "waves" are different.

And, it a way it does happen. What happens in a pond is that the waves bounce around and loose energy until the die out. For radio waves, you get a similar effect and you can see if if you drive a way from a radio transmitter. The signal gets weaker the farther you go. The thing with radio is that they never really reach the far "shore" and bounce back.

Answer 2

A good question. Radio waves have a certain wavelength, anything above 20,000 hertz to many megahertz. A radio receiver can distinguish between all these wavelengths. Radio waves can and do cause interference with each other, as you may have noticed while driving in your car past a strong radio signal - you'll hear two broadcasts at the same time. As far as "crashing" into each other, radio waves are simply light of a certain wavelength. Light does not "crash" but it does excite the atoms it interacts with.

Answer 3

waves- in a perfect water system, actually don't lose their identity, and would flow through each other. However- you do get matter to matter interaction in large waves on water that has some destructive power.

With EM waves- there is no matter to matter destruction.

Answer 4

I think it's because of varied frequencies. Kinda like they're on different planes and don't actually come in contact with each other.
Although, you will find, that sometimes one wave does interupt another, causing feedback and other related things.