Anytime we visualize light / sound waves they are 2 dimensional drawing, so how do they actually work in a 3 dimensional space? Are they more like ripples (like a stone thrown into a pond)?
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I’d say it depends. What are you refering to when you talk about visualizing light/sound waves in 2d? A spectrogram? A diagram of sound traveling across a room?
If it’s the first, that measures certain parameters like frequency (pitch) and intensity (loudness) and presents the information in a graphical way, so that’s the equivalence. If you mean the second, I’d say every “pulse” is like an expanding sphere of light or sound, as long as it’s omnidirectional/unfocused (more or less a lightbulb, a boombox with speakers all around). But you can imagine, if you use a flashlight instead, a laser pointer, or a single speaker, that changes. Now it’s no longer a sphere, but a single cone emerging directionally from the device.
In real life, of course, it wouldn’t be silent outside of the “cone”, but you get me.
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