Eli5 Why light waves require line of sight while sound waves do not?
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The reason why you can’t “see” around a corner with the same resolution as you can hear is because with sound, you don’t care about the angle it hits you from. You lose some details, but the pitch of the sound doesn’t change too much even if it bounces around a bunch.
You might be able to see the color of a tinted lamp around a corner (as the color, like sound, is defined by frequency) but the exact image of the lamp is lost as the light hits a wall and scatters randomly in different directions.
If the light reflected evenly to allow you to see around a corner, then what you have is a mirror.
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