Fundamentally, What is sound?

Physically, “Sound is produced when an object vibrates, creating a pressure wave. This pressure wave causes particles in the surrounding medium (air, water, or solid) to have vibrational motion” (PASCO n.d.). Simply put, literally, this is the simplest way I or anyone else can describe sound, it is ‘vibration in a medium.’ ‘Medium’ is a key word here in which we will get to later, but for now, let’s focus on ‘vibration.’

These vibrations are modeled as sine waves, ie, sound waves which we all know of and love. Furthermore, these sound waves are primarily composed of two key factors which differ the sounds that we hear. Amplitude and Frequency. Amplitude controls how loud we perceive the sound to be, while frequency determines the pitch.

Different sounds are achieved when stacking sine waves on top of each other, achieving unique waves and thus unique sounds. Additionally, since there are infinitely many ways to modify and stack sine waves, there are infinitely many possible sounds. However, as humans we are limited in our abilities to distinguish between many sounds, including a large range of macro and micro frequencies.

Now, back to the other keyword, ‘medium’ If sound needs a medium to exist, does that mean it doesn’t exist in space?