Re: WHY CAN YOU HEAR AROUND A CORNER BUT NOT SEE?

Sound waves and light waves do not work in exactly the same way,
because light waves have polarization and sound waves do not.  But the
reason why you can hear around a corner has nothing to do with these
differences.  It has to do with wavelength.

The wavelength of sound waves is the speed of sound divided by the
frequency of the wave.  The speed of sound in air is about 1000 feet
per second.  The frequencies that you hear are usually in the range of
100 Hz to 1000 Hz.  So the wavelength of a typical sound wave is a few
feet.  On the other hand, the wavelength of light waves that you can
see is about a million times smaller than this.

Waves can bend around corners because of an effect called diffraction.
The amount that a wave will bend around a corner because of diffraction
is about the same as its wavelength.  So it is much easier to see the
bending of the sound waves, because it is about a million times bigger
than the bending of the light waves.  Since you are supposed to be doing
this science project, I will let you look up the details of what
diffraction is and how it works.

Radio waves travel at the same speed as light waves, but their
frequencies are about a million times lower (for the AM band).  So radio
waves bend around corners in about the same way as sound waves do.
Unfortunately,  humans do not have built-in radio wave detectors, so to
do this experiment with radio waves, you need to use a radio.