Like it picks up a signal and processes it and from that I can hear music. But is it just the variation in frequency? And if so, then how do stations work?
In: Technology
The most intuitive way to understand it is that radio waves are actually photons, they just don’t have the same frequency range as the visible light that you see. Different frequencies of photons interact with the world differently – like x-rays we use for … well … X-rays.
The range of frequencies we picked for radio transmission is the best range for that purpose. They penetrate most materials, they travel a far distance before becoming too spread out, they are harmless to organic life, and they happen to interact well with electromagnetic circuits so we can build antennas.
This range of frequencies interact with the electromagnetic circuit in your antenna to wobble those electrons to the same frequency. We use further circuitry to then modulate those wobbles into audio.
Ultimately, the radiowaves travel in much the same manner as the visible light you see all around you. Our eyes just evolved to interact with the range of frequencies that happen to interact with the world in such a way that our brains can interpret (or touch) distant objects visually.
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