What is the difference of a radio wave than a sine wave?
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When you stick up an antenna and run an oscillating current through it, you’re going to produce a sine wave, the building block of all radio communication. How fast that sine wave repeats is what determines your frequency.
Now, that sine wave itself doesn’t carry any information. It’s just a sine wave. So to send information with it the wave must be altered in some fashion that makes sense to the guy on the other end. You can modify the frequency of the sine wave, the amplitude of the sine wave, or the phase of the sine wave (i.e., where it is in its oscillation cycle), or even a combination of amplitude and phase. This is why a radio wave that carries information is no longer a perfect sine wave, because the wave has been altered, or *modulated* with the information it is intended to carry.
Think of it as your voice. You can produce a constant tone with your vocal chords, but you aren’t actually telling anybody anything until you alter that tone with your mouth, pitch, tone, etc. You’ve *modulated* your voice in a fashion that is recognizable and understood (language) by your intended audience.
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