Eli5 Why light waves require line of sight while sound waves do not?

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Eli5 Why light waves require line of sight while sound waves do not?

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Both light and sound can bounce or reflect. Think about being in a room where you can’t see a window and there is no light on, but it’s light outside. You can still see in the room, right? That’s because the light from the window is bounding off of the walls. Sound does the same thing.

You can be in an environment where neither light nor sound will bounce. In an anechoic chamber (a specialized room / chamber that is designed to prevent reflections of sound), you would need direct line of sight (sound?) to hear a sound. If the chamber was also perfectly black in color (or otherwise did not reflect light), you would also need line of sight to see light.

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