Background on me: I am a classically trained trombonist who struggles with music theory.
I know that a trombone is in the key of Bb, but what does that mean? The key is determined by the piece your playing? Additionally, a trombone with an F trigger is shifted into the key of F when the trigger is depressed (same with the G trigger on bass trombone). What does that mean? For me it just means that first position is now 6th.
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Just to add to this- people have given lots of great explanations about the physics of it. I want to add something about the way we notate them.
With any instrument, regardless of the “open” note mentioned in a different comment, we could write the given pitch as you would hear it. But in a lot of cases we choose not to for simplicity in reading notes. If your instrument range spends a lot of time above or below a standard clef then it becomes difficult to read with a million ledger lines.
Think of the notation system like panning in a video game (top down style like OG Pokémon or Zelda). If the screen never moved but most important stuff happened at the edges of the screen it would get annoying really fast. Writing the notes as pitches different than what you hear allows metaphorical panning. Even if your range is funny, you can read notes in the middle of the staff just as you are always the center of a screen when panning. Hopefully this makes sense!
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