Forests are darker than standing on a rooftop on a cloudless day. A leaf of an oak tree does absorb light and reflect light. One might say that light can be blocked as well, and they would be right. This is why, upon interrupting the medium with dense objects like foam, the interaction of molecules on one side of the interrupter can not transfer to those on the other side of the interrupter and can even be absorbed by the interrupter. It is required to have the interaction of molecules of the medium with other molecules of the medium. Sound however, requires sufficient medium. It requires no medium and can therefore can propagate through both extremely sparse - space, upper atmosphere - and extremely dense - plastics, water - environments. They are inherently different on the basis that light is electromagnetic radiation. It is true that sound and light are alike only to the extent that they are both waves. The difference (or color) comes from higher frequencies (called harmonics) that the instrument adds to the fundamental tone. For example, a trumpet sounds vastly different than a flute even if both are playing the same note. When you overlap various pure tones of sound, the overall effect sounds different but has the same fundamental tone. This refers to a different concept than the color that pigments give. Musicians often refer to sound as having color. Lots of different common pigments are organic compounds with densities not too far from 1 gram/cm^3, yet these provide a whole array of different colors. The color of a pigment also is really unconnected with the density or rigidity of the molecules, which affect how sound travels. There’s not much connection between the frequencies of light some pigment absorbs and the frequencies of audible sound it might absorb or emit. If you are wondering what effect the pigments (light absorbers) in a material have on the type of sounds that come from it, the answer is usually: not much. So you can see that there’s no direct match between the sound and light oscillations. The sound frequencies are much lower, and the highest one is a thousand times higher than the lowest one. Not only are the light frequencies much higher, but the highest one is only about twice the lowest one. Each frequency gives a slightly different visible color. Visible light has frequencies from around 4*10^14 Hz to around 8*10^14 Hz. Each frequency gives a different audible pitch. Light can travel fine through a vacuum, which can have fields in it, but there can’t be sound in a vacuumīecause there’s no stuff there to oscillate.Īudible sound has frequencies that cover a very big range, from about 20 Hz to 20,000 Hz, meaning that the pressure at your ear oscillates back and forth 20 to 20,000 times per second. Light is a wave of oscillating electric and magnetic fields perpendicular to the direction it’s going. In solids, those waves can consist of either alternating compressed and stretched regions, or regions wiggling sideways, compared to the direction the wave is traveling. You’re right in that sound waves are a vibration traveling through an object, including "condensed" things like solids and liquids. The key background to this question is the nature of sound waves and light waves.
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