Are sound waves and radio waves the same?

Question

When a radar detector goes off is it a sound wave that is being shot at it? Are radar and sonar waves able to interferring with each other? Does pitch have anything to do with radar?

Answer 1

Sound and radio waves are totally different.

Sound waves are compression waves in that they oscillate in the direction of travel through a medium like gas (e.g., air). Radio waves are translational waves in that they oscillate perpendicular to the direction of travel in whater medium the wave is traveling in.

Sound waves travel at, duh, the speed of sound, which depends on a lot of things like temperature, density of the medium, and such. Depending on such factors, the speed of sound is about 500-600 mph in air at sea level. This works out to be about 880 feet per second at 600 mph.

Radio waves travel about 186,000 miles per second in air or vacuum, which is the speed of light because radio waves are simply light waves in an invisible section of the spectrum. This light speed equates to very roughly 900,000,000 feet per second, which is about 900,000 times faster than sound in air. This accounts for why you see lighteniing before you hear its thunder.

Finally, light waves are made up of vibrating bundles of energy called photons...this applies to radio waves, which are a form of light. Sound waves are made up of molecules of gas (e.g., air) moving back and forth. So radio and sound waves are made up of entirely different components. They will not interfere.

Let's make it clear, because I think you confusing a radar detector with a radar gun. A radar detector simply receives the radar pulse from a radar gun. It is a broad band receiver that accounts for variations in frequency (pitch) due to the moving platform the detector is sitting on (e.g., your car).

On the other hand, the radar gun is a transmitter/receiver (it does both). And the difference in the frequency of the transmitted radar pulse and the frequency of the received pulse is converted into the closure speed of the platform carrying the detector (e.g., your speeding car).

Handheld radar guns cannot accurately detect the speed of a platform that is going in a direction other than directly at or away from the gun. That results because they can only calculate closure rates along the vector between the gun and the speeding car. For example, the closure rate is zero no matter how fast a platform is going if it's going perpendicular to the vector between the gun and the platform.

More sophisticated guns (e.g., radars used to track aircraft) use sophisticated computer programs to calculate platform velocities no matter what direction they are going relative to the gun.

Answer 2

Sound Waves Vs Radio Waves

Answer 3

Sound waves are not the same as radio waves. Sound waves are air pressure waves and radio waves are electromagnetic radiation waves. This is why the speed of sound is much, much smaller than the speed of light. Sound waves also need a medium to propagate, such as water or air. Radio waves don't need a medium. Sound can not travel in a vaccuum (such as space) and travels at different speeds depending on the medium.

Since the two are fundamentally different, there is no interference between the two...radio waves will not be interfered with by sound pressure.

Radar uses EM waves that bounce off an object and return to the detector. The time difference (between sending and receiving) determines the speed of an object. A radar detector simply senses the radar/radio wave and alerts the driver with a sound.

Answer 4

you're getting some bad answers here! and some good ones.

they are NOT the same. sound waves are horizontal pressure waves, and they need a medium like air or water. without that, there are no waves. that's why no one can hear you scream in space. radio waves do not require any medium, that's why they can travel in space. (by the way, the fact that radio waves don't need a medium was the discovery that led to Einstein creating his theory of relativity.)
radio waves are part of the electromagnetic spectrum, which includes visible light, microwaves, gamma radiation, AM and FM radio, cell phone transmissions, tv transmissions (broadcast and satellite, not cable), infrared etc.

car radar detectors do NOT use sound. the pitch of any noise has nothing to do with it. cop radar guns send out a radiation signal. when it bounces back to the cop radar gun, it can tell how fast the thing it bounced off was moving, by comparing the signal received with the one sent out. radar detectors look for those signals, the way a radio looks for radio signals.

sonar, which is used underwater, does use sound, with the same principle. it bounces back and when you hear it back you can calculate location and speed information from the object it bounced off. sonar works underwater because sound travels better under water then it does in air.

Answer 5

This Site Might Help You.

RE:
Are sound waves and radio waves the same?
When a radar detector goes off is it a sound wave that is being shot at it? Are radar and sonar waves able to interferring with each other? Does pitch have anything to do with radar?

Answer 6

Sound waves are mechanical pressure waves in the air. Radio waves are electromagnetic disturbances which propagate through the air. Their behavior is remarkably similar in certain aspects, but they are not the same. A sound wave can be detected by a mechanism that tracks the motions of a thin diaphragm, like your eardrum or in a microphone. Radio waves can't be detected by your ears. (Light, however, consists of really high-frequency radio waves, and these can be detected by your eyes!) Radio waves will produce a bit of electrical voltage and current in an antenna--just a bit of wire--that they happen to pass. Sound waves won't do this.

More fundamentally, you have to have some material for sound waves to travel through, be it air, water, or steel. Thus you can't have sound waves in a vacuum. But you don't need any medium at all for radio waves: they work just fine through a vacuum, for example the vacuum that exists between the sun and us. The light travels through just fine.

Sound waves won't interfere with radio waves, or vice versa.

Answer 7

For the best answers, search on this site https://shorturl.im/aw3RT

No. Sound waves are vibrations. They involve actual motions of molecules and require a medium to travel through. In air, they travel a few hundred meters per second. Electromagnetic waves like radio waves are moving electric and magnetic fields. No physical mass is in motion. (They are made up of massless particles called photons in the modern quantum mechanics description). They can propagate through vacuum. They don't need a medium. They travel several hundred MILLION meters per second.

Answer 8

Radio waves and sound waves are not quite the same things. Obviously they are both waves, but propogate at different frequencies. More specifically, sound waves can be classified as a type of radio wave.
Radio waves are electromagnetic waves occurring on the radio frequency portion (between 3Hz and 300GHz) of the electromagnetic spectrum.
Sound waves have a smaller range of frequencies (between 20Hz and 20KHz for human hearing, some animals can hear higher frequencies). So you can see that sound waves fit into the radio waves frequency range.

Radar detectors use radio waves that are far higher in frequency than sound waves. Typically, radar detectors transmit waves that propogate at between 7.5GHz and 40GHz, way outside of sound wave frequency ranges. So sound waves and radar detector waves cannot interfere because of this huge difference.

Answer 9

A radar detector reacts to a band of frequencies all deemed to be "radar" but none of these are considered sound waves because none of them are audible to humans. I'm not positive if they can interfere with eachother but my guess would be no seeing as radar is at a much higher frequency than sonar.

Answer 10

All radio radiations are the same. They differ only in frequency. Sound waves are more easily deferred or reflected because of the lower frequency. Radar, sonar, infra-red, are all very high frequencies and cannot be heard by the human ear.