I always have seen sound waves shown as sine waves in textbooks and basically every other context in which you learn about sound, but what’s the actual three dimensional shape it makes. Are they just compressional waves?
In: Physics
Depends on the shape of what made the sound.
If you have something small, the pressure fronts will look like spherical shells. For something like a tuning fork, you’ll get waves that look like the sides of the fork that expand as they go outwards. The sound from a trumpet goes out mostly forward in a cone. Whatever it started with though, it will tend to get more spherical as it goes. If you’re far away from something, the difference in that thing’s shape is pretty small from your perspective.
For a visual representation, go look up the Mythbusters clip where they blew up a cement truck. The explosive shock front is quite visible, and it is simply an instantaneous sound wave.
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