Why sound needs a medium to propagate and electromagnetic waves not?

Question

Is because vibrations called sound propagate from a medium to a medium and when they meet vacuum there is nothing to vibrate anymore?If so how do electrons and electromagnetic fields react to a sonic wave?Do they interfere?electrons and atoms can make sounds? OR SOUND IT 'S A PROPERTY OF MOLECULAR LEVEL WHILE ELECTROMAGNETIC WAVES ARE PROPERTY OF ATOMIC LEVELS?

Answer 1

magnetic fields are related to electrons and the force they exert when they travel where as sound is caused by the vibration of the atoms of any given matter when no matter exists the atoms can not transfer the vibration but electrons being one of the basic building blocks of matter can travel across the vacuum and exert magnetic fields. may not be completely accurate ansure but is difficult to explain without using math yuck.

Answer 2

You ask a very challenging questions. Sound waves are compression waves. Some type of matter is compressed and expanded as the wave moves by. Stretch a slinky out, pull some of the spring parts close together and release it and you will see a compression wave, like sound, move down the slinky. Seismic waves (compression waves in the Earth) and phonons (vibrations in a crystal structure) are both similar to sound waves.

Electromagnetic waves are a totally different phenomena. I would not even characterize them as a wave, but rather as a field interaction. An EM wave is an interaction between an electric field and a perpendicular magnetic field in accordance with Maxwell's equations (see wikipedia reference). Basically it has been discovered that a changing magnetic field induces an electric field and a changing electric field induces a magnetic field. This allow the EM wave to be self-propagating and means the EM wave requires no medium to travel through. I have also put a wikipedia reference to EM radiation, which has some good information about this topic.

Personally, I can think of no situation in which an electromagnetic wave and a sound wave can interact.

Answer 3

Sound needs a medium because it is a physical phenomenon where as EM radiation is in the physical world but is more a special type of energy which is constantly alternating between magnetic and electric fields. Sound starts as a compression or rarefaction and as it travels outward so the bunching up and spreading apart of the molecules in the medium continue albeit with diminishing intensity as you move away from the source. Since the two types of waves are traveling along in entirely different ways there is no interaction or interferrence between the phenomena. To understand this better i would suggest you get yourself a book on acoustics and another one on quantum theory.

Answer 4

i think it would be appropriate to say that sound wave needs medium to propagate and electromagnetic waves needs an electric field to propagate